7 posts tagged “advertising”
The Super Bowl is the best thing ever. That's a fact. More people watch the Super Bowl on television than literally everything else, including that retarded Bret Michaels reality show. More people watch the Super Bowl because it's the best, and it's the best because more people watch it. QED.
The Super Bowl is SO good that people who don't even like football watch it just to see the advertisements that run when the game isn't happening. It's true. You can look it up. That doesn't happen with ANY other show. Try it, you'll see. Tomorrow send an email to your co-workers inviting them to your house to watch the advertisements that run when Bret Michaels isn't acting like a jackass and see who shows up. You'll be watching alone like a loser and your co-workers will laugh at you the next day. And they would be right.
There hasn't been much buzz about the Super Bowl commercials this year because, well, the economy is in the shitter and nobody wants to buy anything or spend any money advertising the products that nobody wants to buy. The only thing that I have heard about any of the commercials is that Coke Zero is remaking the best commercial of all time. As you might expect, there are Pittsburgh Steelers involved.
And here's a glimpse of the remake.
If "Mean" Joe Greene is to be believed - and why would he lie? - there is a twist at the end of the remake that is not to be missed. I, however, am going to miss it because I will be AT THE FRIGGIN' GAME!!! I was going to upgrade my cable service this week to include DVR capabilities, but it turns out I don't have time. I still have a VCR, though, and I think it even still works. Does anybody still sell VHS tapes?
The first time I heard The Moon and Antarctica it pissed me off. This was back in the halycon days of the summer '04, when the country was only mostly in the shitter and Modest Mouse owned the radio waves. I'd exhausted Good News For People Who Like Bad News and floated on to their back catalog. Within the first few seconds of the second track, I realized I'd heard the song before. And that I'd heard it on a *shudder* car commercial. Probably a Volkswagon commercial, too - meant to appeal to those uppity yuppies with that snooty German engineering.
Okay, actually it was Nissan, but it still annoyed me that what I thought was new music (to me, at least) had already been brought to my attention through an advertisement. It's not at all unlike the reaction many people have to one of their long-favorite bands selling its songs to advertising agencies. And while I can see the point those people are trying to make, I've come around on the issue and disagree that it's problematic.
The thing is - as much as I'd like to believe otherwise, most of the the music to which I listen - to which everybody listens - is made by career musicians. These are people who decided at some point that they wanted to play guitar and write songs for a living, and made choices along the way to support their dream. I decided at some point that I wanted to be a marine biologist and made choices along the way to support that dream. If somebody told me, now that I've made it, that I shouldn't earn any money - that I should be a marine biologist only because a few thousand teenagers liked some of the studies I'd done and to that accept a little cash would compromise the integrity of those studies.... Well, I'd probably punch that person in the mouth. And then I'd take the check. And if an advertising executive approached me and said that he'd like to have Morgan Freeman or Gene Hackman or somebody read some of my report on the migratory habits of freshwater eels over some footage of cars driving.... Well, I'd take that check too.
So maybe I'm a cynic. That's fair. But these situations sometimes work out well for the fans too. Case in point: The Replacements were a (justifiably) critically lauded and (tragically) commercially unsuccessful band throughout the 1980's. After a few (patchy) early records, they hit their stride with their third album Let It Be and soon moved on to a major label. At their peak - Tim and Pleased To Meet Me - they were unparalleled; they wrote airtight pop/rock masterpieces not heard since Big Star imploded almost two decades prior. But audiences never tuned in and the 'Mats disbanded in 1991 to little fanfare. Three years later, some television producers shopping a show for the new fall schedule offered to buy a little-known Replacements song for the opening credits. The show became a surprise hit. The song enjoyed some success on the pop charts before it quickly wore out its welcome. And the band grew wealthy beyond its wildest dreams. Just a few months ago, Paul Westerberg - the creative force behind the Replacements' best work - offered a brand new record for sale for just forty-nine cents. Would Paul have continued to make music after the Replacements disbanded? Almost certainly. Would he have been able to afford - basically - to give that music away without the money he made from the hit TV show? Probably not. You can scoff at Jennifer Aniston's haircut and those handclaps to your heart's content, but they all but bought the second half of Paul Westerberg's career.
I surrender. Yeah, I know I promised to stay on top of all the latest developments leading up to the theatrical release of "The Dark Knight" on July 18, 2008, but I just can't keep up any more. The next Batman movie is destined to be the greatest motion picture in the history of time, and the accompanying marketing blitz is equivalent to the film's stature. The last straw - the one that lamed that poor camel - debuted today on the Domino's Pizza website. For the low, low price of one pizza, your online order will unlock special content - including a new trailer with twenty whole seconds of new Joker material. Why would a pizza company promote a movie, you ask? Well, why not? It's synergy. And it's probably "Xtreme," because Batman is the most Xtreme of all the superheroes.
Well I, for one, am sick of this cross-pollinated corporate bullshit. It cuts against the grain of the spirit of Batman - a self-made hero who maximized the power of his inheritance to buy a bunch of nifty gadg-- uh.... Okay then, Batman would never stand for the glorification of multi-national corporations like Warner Brothers Pictures or Dominos Pizza or the mighty Wayne Enterpri-- er.... Oooh, I got one: the shameless self-promotion belies the humility of a hero with the taste for the theatrical who has bestowed upon the local police department a beacon with which to summo-- oh.... Hmmm, I'm kinda hungry. I think I might order a pizza.
I love the internets. I realize it's no great revelation that they're the ultimate free association tool for the easily distracted, but I think it's still worth mentioning from time to time. I've watched countless hours of NFL playoff football over the past two weekends, and I've seen those commercials where Burger King tells its customers they've stopped making Whoppers more than can possibly be good for my sanity. They're really beginning to freak me out. They're called "Whopper Freakout" so I guess that's what they're going for. Seems to me an odd way to move hamburgers - unsettling potential customers - but what do I know?
Anyway, I began thinking about what an unfortunate indictment they are of our society - that grown adults become apoplectic when unable to purchase a greasy three dollar hamburger made of sawdust and Grade F beef - which got me thinking about disgusting fast food in general which got me thinking about Patton Oswalt (now best known as the voice of the rat in "Ratatouille") and his tremendous bit about KFC's "failure piles in sadness" Bowls. So, naturally, I looked it up on Youtube. And then another link on the right caught my eye, an old routine titled: Patton Oswalt - Nick Nolte as Han Solo. And to think I might not have found it if I hadn't been grossed out by a Burger King commercial. And, sadly, I'll never believe that any of those over-the-top reactions were staged.
i know, i know.... it may seem like i'm piling on, but i am guided by a greater power here. i have a mission. soccer is just the worst and if, at the end of my life, i could look back and know that i played but a small role in the elimination of its great scourge on our society i would die a happy man. you're wrong for liking it - you know who you are - and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
probably my very favorite story about soo doh nim, of all there are from which to choose, is that of the day he was holding forth on parenting in the smoking room of misha's. i don't recall what exactly was said, but it was something along the lines of questioning the masculinity of future sons. soo said whatever he said, and dabysan muttered not-so-much under his breath, "there's a kid that will never know how to throw a football." soo lowered his steely gaze, paused for effect, and with an effete flick of his wrist gestured with his cigarette and replied cattily, "i can throw a fucking football." never before in the history of speech had a single sentence so utterly undermined its intended outcome, and it's possible one never will.
as it happened, a few weeks later at the challenge of doc paradox, soo showed up at our weekly football game and as it turned out, he could throw a fucking football. we were shocked. what's more shocking (or not, actually) is that soo can throw a fucking football better than that of professional - heh - "athlete" david beckham, as the video below will clearly illustrate. i just can't wait to see the ones where beckham is tested on his vertical leap or bench press reps or forty meter dash or any other empirical measure of athletic ability, really.
the sports-related internets are all a-flutter (a-twitter? help me out here.) with the impending arrival on this continent of the sixth spice girl and the requisite accompanying media blitz. naturally, much of this attention has fallen - and negatively - upon adidas' new advertising campaign "futbol v. football," which pairs beckham with new orleans saints star reggie bush. apparently, professional sports had heretofore been unsullied by the stain of advertising dollars and this craven attempt at consumerism on the part of adidas threatens to forever tarnish the purity of soccer. or something. i can't tell for sure because i'm too busy laughing.
