by Linda Holmes

There are very few commercials I consider worthy of watching on purpose, but Discovery has updated its multiple-award-winning "The World Is Just Awesome" spot, which is a perfect Friday lift.

According to Discovery, the kid on the ship is Zac Sunderland, the youngest person to circumnavigate the world; the kids singing are from a Michigan elementary school, and yes, that is the Hadron Collider. (And Mythbusters Jamie preparing to set Adam on fire.)

Advertising can be so unpleasant, disruptive, and often tin-eared as to what it is that people actually like about things that spots like this deserve some credit, I think, for capturing this well what it is that people actually like about the brand. It's still incredibly manipulative in its way, but there's something about the bluntness of "The World Is Just Awesome" that's kind of irresistible.

by Linda Holmes

Fox has acknowledged that the "Snakes On a Cane" image you may have been seeing brief flashes of on TV — they're stitched together in the compilation clip above — was a viral marketing effort on behalf of the network's popular drama House.

And it's fitting that the image involves snakes, because if anything is in the process of consuming its own tail, it's the kind of campaign that is commonly referred to as viral marketing.

Pressing the same button too many times, and the irony of a pun, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Thrill Is Gone: How Viral Marketing Will Inevitably Kill Viral Marketing" >

by Linda Holmes

In early April, the UK charity Women's Aid, which battles domestic violence, released this public service announcement, directed by Atonement director Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley. Without showing graphic violence you couldn't see on any crime procedural any night of the week, Wright creates a genuinely disturbing two-minute film that unsettles precisely because it's shot so straightforwardly.

The violence late in the piece isn't carefully choreographed with shifting angles and amped-up music; it's a woman being kicked, and it's far more disturbing for its simplicity.

But now, Clearcast, the body that's responsible for approving ads for British television, has reportedly decided that the PSA is not suitable for television unless they cut the end. You know, the part with the domestic violence in it.

I can't speak to the amount of violence that's been allowed in commercials in the UK in the past, but what makes this ad so disturbing is precisely the fact that it takes violence seriously and presents it as terrifying rather than balletic or devoid of consequences.

I was curious to see whether Clearcast has guidelines that explain why it might be making this decision.

The guidelines, after the jump...

Continue reading "Knightley's Domestic Violence PSA Censored — For Violence" >

by Sara Sarasohn

Another dispatch from the Monkey See infomercial desk:

In my house, we call Billy Mays "the yelling guy." In that, I don't believe that we are all that unique. Billy Mays is a guy who yells on television. He yells about Orange Glo, the Big City Slider Station, OxyClean, iCan health insurance, and various other products with practical uses, some of which have capital letters in the middle of their single-word names.

My nine year old son likes to imitate Billy Mays, probably because Billy Mays is ridiculously easy to imitate. His does his research while watching his favorite TV channels, all of which are prime Billy Mays territory: Discovery Channel, The Science Channel and The Military Channel.

The Yelling Guy gets big news and a big new opportunity, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Yelling Guy' Billy Mays Winds The Production/Promotion Universe Around Itself Once Again" >

by Marc Hirsh

I have to tip my hat to Vince Offer. The rising-star TV pitchman's weirdly, creepily fascinating delivery has surely brought more folks than would have thought themselves susceptible to such things perilously close to picking up the phone to say, "My goodness, I really do need a Shamwow in my life." The man may be a huckster, but he's a damn good one. No wonder Billy Mays himself is feeling the pressure.

But I'm not remotely tempted to buy Offer's latest product, the Slap Chop. For one thing, I've owned almost the same tool for about ten years (more specifically, the one he dramatically chucks over his shoulder in a perfect arc into the sink because of the Slap Chop's greater ease of cleaning, which is the only difference); he's not exactly revealing a new invention to the world. But the commercial is a gem of carnival-barker hyperbole and mesmerizing, wallet-loosening wordplay.

The genius therein, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Strange And Wonderful World Of Vince Offer" >

by Linda Holmes

This list over at Cracked.com gives a pretty good rundown of some of the more sexist commercials ever to run down the pike. (Warning: Language mildly spicy.) But I think my favorite is this classic Folgers commercial, in which it is suggested that making bad coffee for your husband is almost as bad as kicking the cane out from the hand of an elderly lady as she attempts to cross the street.

Just a suggestion: If your husband reacts to bad coffee this way, get the nice European neighbor-lady to suggest a new husband, not new coffee.

by Linda Holmes

If you're planning to attend our post-Super Bowl chat at 11:00 a.m. this morning with Bob Garfield but you didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the Super Bowl ads, you can still get in on all the good talk. As bizarre as it seems to have a gallery of commercials to be watched on purpose, Hulu.com has them all in a handy collection.

I think there are some interesting things to note this year, including one or two advertisers who seem like tight-economy specialists you'd never see in any other year, some very elaborate visuals, and one very simple and very funny idea that, for me, was the best laugh of the night. Pick a favorite, spot a pattern, or just wonder why this much work goes into things that are often so uninteresting, and we'll be here at 11:00 listen and talk.

by Linda Holmes

I saw this commercial go by on the entirely real television last night, and I couldn't help sharing it. The moderately insane fad beauty product hasn't been as in vogue recently as it was for a while (where have you gone, Topsy Tail?), and I was sort of thrilled at the suggestion that you should purchase a giant piece of plastic to help you look more like Audrey Hepburn.

Just look at the gallery! Look at the giant hair! The Bump-It is appropriate, the above commercial swears, for tennis! The pool! The red carpet!

It occurred to me that this might kind of a ridiculous idea, but then it occurred to me that I wear an awful lot of sweatshirts. So I went to an expert: Jessica Morgan of Go Fug Yourself, the brilliantly funny and multiple-award-winning home of red-carpet fashion joy and puzzlement.

Jessica was somewhat less intensely weirded out by the Bump-It than I: "As someone who loves big hair, I have to admit that I'm sort of dying to try it myself," she spilled. As for the red carpet, she points out that using forms to create giant red-carpet hair isn't that unusual, particularly in the creation of things like beehives -- "I sort of wish the beehive would come back," she noted -- even though properly motivated celebrities can perfectly well get their giant hair "using back-combing and extensions, like a normal person." Jessica suspects that, in fact, if a professional used a Bump-It or something like it in a red-carpet do, you might never notice it, let alone think it looked as freakish as some of the pictures appear.

But she backed me up on my first fashion-ignorant guess: "That said, SWIMMING seems like a HUGE MISTAKE. Who needs big, giant hair whilst swimming?"