Commercials that shoot themselves in the foot

[jw]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

Many years ago, the Irish Tourist Board ran ads showing pictures of rain-covered hills as its main feature. I'm not sure which market they were aiming at, but rest assured, rain starts to loses its appeal very quickly.

'Tis the greenness that they're promoting. You'd be surprised at how many people find that appealing.

[Moku]

Not such a novelty for some of us!

[Dasla]

We also don't tend to get the presciption drug ads here, except for anti-smoking ones and (I believe). But when I heard that you do in the US, I wondered about that, surely your doctor is the best one to prescribe the right medications? Ok maybe your Doctor maybe a bit out of date but if that is a concern, get a second opinion? Better that then trust advertisment.

As for the side effect thing. A few years ago, when I was in a drug trial, I was given a list of possible side effects. The person running the trial pointed out that it didn't mean I would get all or even any of the side effects but it is what that had been reported by people taking the drug previously. I was also asked to list anything that I felt was a side effect. How many people had to describe the side effect before it was included in the list I don't know. I was on the drug that was, at the time, the most commonly prescribed drug and which was being compared against a newly developed drug.

[Lainie]

I don't care for prescription drug adverts, but they don't change the fact that one's doctor has to prescribe the medicine. The existence of the ads doesn't magically make the drugs OTC.

[Roadsterboy]

Regarding Mac vs. PC adverts:

Originally Posted by Richard W

I understand the US version had similar issues, but not as pronounced.

Ours had John Hodgman as the PC, and Justin Long as the Mac. I wasn't too familiar with either actor when the ads aired-I recognized Hodgman as the "resident expert" on The Daily Show and Long as a dorky high school kid on Ed. So either you were a kind of stuffy know it all, or an insecure, immature kid with a crush on your English teacher.

Mostly, I found the whole ad campaign smug.

[1958Fury]

Originally Posted by Roadsterboy

Regarding Mac vs. PC adverts:

TVTropes talks about this on the "Misaimed Fandom" trope.

[Dasla]

Originally Posted by Lainie

I don't care for prescription drug adverts, but they don't change the fact that one's doctor has to prescribe the medicine. The existence of the ads doesn't magically make the drugs OTC.

I mis-worded my post. It should have been "surely your doctor has to prescribe your medication" not "surely your doctor is the best to prescribe your medication"

[Lainie]

I think the point of the ads is to get patients to talk to their doctors about the meds. In fact, that's a common tagline -- "Talk to your doctor about . . . "

[crocoduck_hunter]

Doctors are certainly going to be more willing to write a prescription for a drug that their patient has exhibited interest in rather than one that they exhibit skepticism or concern about.

[UrbanLegends101]

Originally Posted by jw

'Tis the greenness that they're promoting. You'd be surprised at how many people find that appealing.

Whle rainy weather does get old fast, a Florida afternoon thunderstorm with green grass and trees everywhere is certainly a treat after spending a year in a location with sandy beaches stretching from Persian Gulf inland for 500 miles.

[Keket]

Boston Pizza has a new line of pastas. The ad says that they're so great that foodies love them. But then proceeds to imply that being a foodie is a bad thing. It ends with the tag line: "Just make sure you don't become a foodie."

[finger stutters]

I haven't bought a Kit Kat since they started that commercial campaign with all of the crunching noises. They irritate me so much that I frequently change the channel. They must work well for the company because they've been doing them for several years, but I just can't even with them.

[Roadsterboy]

The Trop 50 commercials with Jane Krakowski, acting like a diva and annoying her friends. They just played one, where she's walking through her house in a red-carpet style dress talking about orange juice to her friends (who are off screen). Eventually it turns out that her three friends are holding up light reflectors and a fan to make her look like she's in a t.v. commercial, and when one asks for some orange juice, she tells them to keep holding up the lights and they'll get some when she's done with hers.

All of the adverts are like this-Jane Krakowski flounces through her house and generally acts like a jerk towards her friends. I can't figure out why that's supposed to make me buy an orange juice drink-I don't think that Tropicana is trying to tell us that drinking their product will make you difficult to deal with, or it's so good that your friends will put up with a metric crapton of your garbage just to get a glass of it.

[Spud Sabre]

Pepsi Max ads. No I don't want to be like those jerks who think they're clever.

[Richard W]

I remembered the great example I thought of. It was the Conservative party poster ad campaign from the 2005 general election.

In the distant past they'd had success with the slogan "Labour isn't working", and I guess they wanted to recapture that. So they came up with the idea of posters which asked some populist question or other, and had the tagline "Are you thinking what we're thinking?"

There were various posters with questions about immigration and so on. The one I remember was about hospitals. The Conservatives thought Labour were spending too much on the NHS. They had a poster with the question "How hard can it be to clean a hospital?" and the usual tagline, "Are you thinking what we're thinking?"

What I, and presumably a lot of people, thought was "Well, pretty hard I should think. It's a large public building filled with sick people who might well be uncontrollably leaking various fluids. It has to be cleaned to a very high standard with some parts completely sterile, and it's more likely than usual to be filled with resistant germs. It's an important, but difficult and unpleasant job which deserves more support and resources than it's been getting."

What we were apparently supposed to think was "Wow, it must be really easy! My five year old could do that! Let's cut their wages, the scrounging bastards. They should get proper jobs! I know, I'll vote Conservative!"

Some of the immigration ones may have been even worse, but I don't think I saw those directly.

Labour had been becoming increasingly unpopular around then, but they won by a higher margin than expected, and although they lost 5.5% of the vote, the Conservatives hardly gained any of it.

[crocoduck_hunter]

As soon as you got to the "Are you thinking what we're thinking" tagline part, I thought you were going to say that someone in the Labor Party had turned them into a bunch of Pinky & The Brain references.

[Gayle]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

Many years ago, the Irish Tourist Board ran ads showing pictures of rain-covered hills as its main feature. I'm not sure which market they were aiming at, but rest assured, rain starts to loses its appeal very quickly.

Not for some of us it doesn't. 365 days of sunshine can really get on your nerves.

[Lainie]

There's an ad for some woo-ish product that starts off "Did you know the core of our health is actually on the inside?"

Where else would it be?

[Minstrel]

I keep my core of health in a tupperware container in the refrigerator. I don't want it going bad before I'm done with it.

[DawnStorm]

Mine might be in my car.