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’Net Junkie Shawn "Speedy" Lopes |
Web site slams
commercials you
hatePerhaps you've seen that TV ad for Mazda. You know, the one with the pesky "zoom, zoom, zoom" chorus that sticks to your brain like spray glue. As a car traverses a winding road, a young boy, perched on a cliff in a suit and tie, leans into the camera and whispers "Zoom, zoom." I'm clueless as to the demographic Mazda thought they would reach with this commercial. It seems incongruous, pointless and slightly annoying, yet I'm sure someone got paid a hefty sum to see it through.
Well, clueless marketing strategists, Nathan Alexander has you in his sights. If you've given the green light to a half-cocked TV ad in the last couple of years, there's a good chance the outspoken editor and Web master of www.commercialsihate.com has seen it and hates it. He may have even told the world about your 30-second stinker in a nasty, expletive-filled online diatribe.
"The advertising industry thinks we're stupid," states Alexander on his site. "Commercials assume the worst about us. Commercials use ugly stereotypes to appeal to the lowest common denominator. That's nasty and insulting. Lucky for you, my reader, so am I."
No feelings are spared as he rips into an ill-conceived advertisement for DiGiorno frozen pizza, in which a subway rider notices a young woman carrying a pizza and asks -- get this -- "Who delivered?" "Who says that? 'Who delivered?'" Alexander asks. "What are you supposed to answer to 'Who delivered?' I would have said, 'Some loser in a hatchback.'"
He also takes issue with Cingular Wireless' slogan, "The wireless company that believes in the value of self-expression" ("What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything!"); the Visa Check Card commercials ("Using a Visa Check Card and signing the receipt or punching in your PIN takes just as much time as writing a check -- and you still have to show your ID"); Huggies Pull-Ups ("Don't they KNOW that if a child CAN remove his training pants, that he'll DO it?") and the opaque catch phrase for the lipid-lowering agent Zocor: "Zocor. Be there." ("Be where? In the pill?")
There's also a message board for visitors to chime in on, an online store for fans of the site, as well as genuine e-mails from Gatorade on Alexander's inquiries regarding the precise origins of their novel "Frost," "Alpine Snow," "Glacier Freeze" and "Whitewater Splash" flavors. Tasty stuff, that dialogue.
Note: Web sites mentioned in this column were active at time of publication. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin neither endorses nor is responsible for their contents.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
’Net Junkie drops every Monday.
Contact Shawn "Speedy" Lopes at slopes@starbulletin.com.
