As internet advertising strives to make television and print advertising obsolete, companies have to do their best to pull their audience in. I frequently choose to surf the net while watching TV, or get up to grab some ice cream during the break, or just fast forward if I’ve used my DVR. A commercial has to either be truly colorful or loudly obnoxious for me to even notice what product is being blared at me.
You know what I do notice? Ads targeted right at me, or at least, at what the website I’m currently visiting believes is my demographic. Google scans my e-mails and search results, Facebook takes advantage of my sex, age, and listed interests.
A commercial basically needs to do this to grab my attention these days:
I occasionally will think back to older commercials that made me giggle when I was either in middle or high school. Some weren’t meant to be funny. Take Life Alert for instance. While I lived in Dallas, the Life Alert commercials featured an old man falling over saying, “I’m having a heart attack!” Heart attacks aren’t hilarious, but the commercial most definitely was. Unfortunately, I was not able to locate that particular one. I also remember one with an old woman speaking into the camera, “I don’t want to be a burden to my family.” Death is never actually mentioned during the ad, but how could one not feel its looming presence?
How about ads that trick you into thinking you’re watching a commercial for Snuggles Detergent, when in fact it’s for a BattleTanx Playstation video game? Back in middle school, I loved this particular Sprite commercial:
In the UK, Volkswagen aired a commercial for the new Diesel Jetta. People would run around writing “Die” on post-it notes and doors while the Exorcist’s “Tubular Bells” played in the background. By the end, we’d all figured out they were really spelling “Diesel.” Those tricky bastards!
Of course someone would have sent you a silly foreign car commercial (I will refrain from posting the one where the cat’s head gets cut off by a closing sunroof):
This UK Domestos ad is by far my favorite. I laugh every time. How could you not appreciate a germ singing about giving us all diarrhea?
