It’s hot as heck-fire here in the Mid-Atlantic, so we’ve been spending a lot of time inside with the air-conditioning, watching all the great summer TV offerings — and rolling our eyes at the ads that are constantly hurled in our direction.
One spot that recently caught our attention and whose logic turned our brains inside-out is the Ruby Tuesday ad that asks, “What if there was a place where eating felt more like dining?”
You mean like a restaurant?
Or a dining hall?
Or a dining room?
Regardless, it brought up the topic of inane ad slogans, and we wanted to get the Consumerist hive-mind opinion on what y’all consider to be the most baffling slogans ever.
Just a quick survey around Consumerist HQ came up with a few, like:
Hilton: “Travel should take you places.”
Maxwell House: “Good just got great.”
Wendy’s: “You know when it’s real.”
And this one, which is more of a flat-out lie than a slogan–
Verizon: We never stop working for you”
Anyway, amuse yourself, each other and us by sharing your thoughts in the comments on the most inane advertising slogans ever.
Brighthouse – “Hello Friend”.
Hey, if you were my friend you wouldn’t charge me $12/month to use that terrible refurbished DVR that uses 20 year old technology, and an operating system that makes WIndows 98 look stable, to record onto a hard drive that has less space than a Nintendo Wii, and read/write access speeds rivaling tape drives from the 1970′s.
The motto of police departments all over America: “To Serve and Protect.”
Riiiiiight.
NYPD: “Up against the wall, M—–F—–!”
this! +100!!
You heard it wrong, it’s “To Disturb and Upset”.
Oh, and “Where do you want to go today?” That was Microsoft, if you recall. Like Windows suddenly sprouted wheels and was going to drive me to the park.
“It looks like you’re surfing for midget porn. Can I help?”
I myself was somewhat disillusioned with a certain Patent Medicine slogan: “Mugwump Specific: Cure and Preventive for All Venereal Diseases.”
Right spot of rubbish, that was.
A Night With Venus Equals A Lifetime With Mercury.
My favorite Billboard slogan is:
Your wife is hot!!!
…Better get your A/C fixed.
Awesome.
Another AT&T slogan: “America’s largest 4G network”
T-Mobile used that slogan first (it still does), and trademarked it.
So AT&T has to use “The nation’s largest 4G network” instead. Funny thing is, AT&T’s HSPA+ coverage footprint is now far larger than T-Mobile’s.
In England (1960s): “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
Make 7 Up Yours
When I’m stuck listening to the radio at work (usually the sports-talk channel) there’s this mortgage broker ad in every break with this awful jingle playing throughout. The end of the commercial always ends with some woman wailing “We’re working harder for you!” Which begs the question: what does that slogan have to do with a mortgage broker? Couldn’t that apply to any business? Geez Louise, every time I hear that ad, I want to grab that radio and throw it against a wall.
KRAFT: “You know you waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant it.”
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, if you don’t want it, you will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile.
I always liked Kahn’s Hot Dogs – “The weiner the world awaited.”
Gasoline (Texaco or was it Exxon?) slogan: “Now, more than ever, the gas with guts”
What the hell does that mean?
Esso “put a tiger in your tank”. I always pictured tony the tiger driving a tank.
I thought that was Exxon (not saying you’re wrong, but I just didn’t remember Esso doing it).
Either way – reasonably effective, and helped sell Frosted Flakes, too!
I believe that is what Strauss-Kahn thinks.
Stella Artois: Perfection has its price.
Its a beer. Granted, its a good beer. But its still just a beer.
“We’ve got balls!” – Buck and Phil’s Sports Kingdom
Been seeing this one on to-go bags from Wendy’s lately:
“Better Later”
Oh, so it’s not so good right now?
Quicken Loans: “Everything we do is engineered to amaze.”
Every time I hear this, I’m befuddled by the suggestion of engineering in terms of refinancing a loan.
It seems like a slogan more suited to a company that actually MAKES something.
Or heck, even BASF who doesn’t make the products we use, but makes the products we use better.
How about the salacious and racist “A buck well spent on a Springmaid sheet”? The illustration was a native American guy with a formal feathered headdress lying in a hammock with a native American woman in a short skirt standing beside him. (For those under a certain age, a “buck” was a term for a young male native American.) It was infamous back in ’49, and I doubt they could run it today. In fact, so many people are sure no one would ever run such an awful ad that Snopes wound up checking out the story and verifying that, indeed, bad taste in advertising has been around for a while now. (http://www.snopes.com/business/market/springmaid.asp)
Head On: Apply directly to the forehead!
Head On: Apply directly to the forehead!
Head On: Apply directly to the forehead!
Head On: Apply directly to the forehead!
Head On: Apply directly to the forehead!
Oh I hate those bastards!
I did a parody of that. It was for a moel in a tube (look it up):
Head Off: Apply directly to the foreskin.
Head Off: Apply directly to the foreskin.
Head Off: Apply directly to the foreskin.
Byyyyyyy Mennen
I think “Travel should take you places” is genius — I love it. It’s deceptively simple, apparently stating the obvious, yet that’s the point. In just five short words, it invites you to think about travel as more than a ticket to a destination, and goes to the heart of why people choose to go to places like Rome or Paris. The reference to taking you places is about more than geography; it’s about having an experience that might change you in some way, maybe for a week, or maybe forever. That’s what travel is, for me, and this slogan captures it brilliantly, with a subtlety and economy that’s practically poetry.
[snatches the Ex-Lax from his had]
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
AMERICA! F%CK YEAH!
Hijack in progress.
How about the most honest tagline ever?
Growing up in Motown there was this local shoe store…..
‘Sibleys. On the boulevard.
Open…………….till we close.’
Capital One’s “50 % more cash”.
Let me translate what 50 % more cash means: I give you $ 100. You give me 50 % more cash = you give me back $ 150.
A light year from whatever they think they are advertising with that 50 % more cash.
Ummmm… I could be wrong – but I believe they mean that the interest you earn is 50% higher than anywhere else. Thus, if you earn 5% on 100 – then 50% more cash would mean you’d receive $7.50 – not $5 like everyone else.
(Qualifier: I used to work at Capital One in the IT department…)
Additionally, I’m still trying to figure out how you went from putting $100 in your account, to getting back $150 automatically – but then I could be mis-understanding what you wrote. The ad obviously links to how much interest they pay for your deposits (maybe their CDs – I’d have to check) – but still…
Now, from what you wrote, if you left the $100 in the account and let it accrue 5% over 10 years with re-investment – then you’d get to that $150 (more actually) – but again, I’m befuddled by the logic.
Blah – probably just me…
50 % more cash – as it didn’t specify 50 % more than what, let’s just keep it simple. $ 150 is 50 % more cash than my original $ 100.
“It’s avocado season, only at Subway.”
So Subway has cornered the avocado market?
Hotel Billboard: Lincoln never stayed here, but you can
Aqua Velva “take it off, take it all off” with bumps and grind for background music. Definitely in top ten of best commercials ever. IMO.
Remember “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile”? Came straight out of a focus group in which the market researchers noted how many participants thought of Oldsmobiles as “the kind of car your father would drive.” Like “We may be the only phone company in town but we try not to act like it” was a product of people repeating that Bell Telephone was the only phone company in town. Defensive slogans in lieu of more attractive products and services are the marketing equivalent of running up the white flag.
The funny part of the Ruby Tuesday ad is that eating feels more like dining because they’ve added a salad bar- which, to me, makes it feel cheap.
An old one: “Fly Midway to the Bahamas.” Maybe they’re going to drop you in the ocean halfway.
The Illinois Lottery: Somebody’s Gotta Win
Sherwin Williams: “Cover the Earth”
“Bet your sweet ASS per Cream”
OK, definitely pants-down the most ridiculous misfire of a slogan goes to: Tim Hortons. I just listened to a radio commercial going into great detail describing a delicious oozingly sweet iced caramel latte with whipped cream and sticky caramel drizzled all over it, it sounded so good …. but then after describing this treat they delivered the Tim Hortons slogan: “Tim Hortons…. Where Quality Meets Value”.
Where Quality Meets Value. Where F#&KING QUALITY MEETS VALUE??!! That’s the reason to buy your wife-beaters from WalMart, not an enticement into an indulgent treat.
Checker’s/Rally’s: “You Gotta Eat!”
In Ontario, you buy beer at a government owned Beer Store or Beer Store agency. So the slogan “The Beer Store – where the beers are” is kind of silly, because they really don’t need to advertise, and their name says it all anyway.
Friskies, Feed the Senses.
The cat eats the food and is immediately sent on an acid trip
Not an inane ad slogan but a “man, I feel sorry for that guy”.
On the subway here is an advertisement for a local lawyer. His name?
Justin Bieber.
I keep thinking of that scene in Office Space where Michael Bolton is complaining about the singer…
OMG do you live in Philly? I have seen that poster on the Septa buses before. I took a pic and sent it to a few friends with the caption, “WTF?! Justin Beiber is the last person on earth I want representing my case!”
“You can save 16% or moron car insurance”.
Little.
Yellow.
Different.
Better.
(for Nuprin…I still go back and forth on whether this is the most inane or brilliant ad slogan ever.)
Local Philly car dealership:
“Is Barbera The Best? Boy, I Guess!!”
You guess?!?! Not so confident about that, huh?…
Any slogan, period. Focus your energies on your products and services and business will take care of itself. I file this crap in the same bucket of bullmanure that corporate/departmental mission statements are in.
We were vacationing in Canada last summer and saw a commercial that I guess was trying to draw geographically challenged tourists to Ottawa with the tagline “Ottawa, it’s Canada’s Capitol”.
I know it’s not actually a slogan, but what about the Bayer aspirin ad with the guy on the airplane telling the flight attendant he has a headache. She offers him Bayer aspirin and he says, “No, I’m not having a heart attack, I just have a headache.”
Seriously? An adult doesn’t know aspirin is a pain reliever? Forget the aspirin, give him some arsenic.
Those ads make me not want to buy the product. It’s one of the few commercials that actually makes me angry because it’s so stupid.
The custom of putting a period after every word of a slogan is getting old. I know that I’ve seen it quite a few times, but of course now the examples are escaping me. Years ago there was Wranger: “Real. Comfortable. Jeans.” Okay, I get it. It’s all of those three things separately, plus one cohesive idea! But it’s been repeated a lot, and now it just feels lazy.