Who would have ever thought that a low-budget infomercial touting an egg-shaped device home pedicure device with “100 precision microfiles” might be deceptive in some way? Not, apparently, its actors, two of whom are suing the makers of “PedEgg.” The thespians say they PedEgg told them the commercial would be internets-only. Instead, it’s on the national airways. We don’t care about that part. Rather, we chuckle over the suit’s revelation that PedEgg hired a horror-makeup guy to apply “artificial bumps and discoloration” to their feet to increase the contrast between the “before” and “after” shots. Quelle horreru! Besides their dishonest advertising tactics, someone should also sue PedEgg for the gross-out shot when they dump all the foot shavings in the trash. See the full commercial inside.
commercials
Waste Your Saturday With 50 Funny Commercial Parodies
Nerve.com has assembled a list of 50 fake commercials for everything from Tylenol BM (you’ll sleep right through your bodily functions!) to the Woomba (it cleans your noony!). There’s even some that don’t involve body parts, like Lily Tomlin’s increasingly agitated housewife hawking “G-r-r-r Detergent” in 1975. Our favorite recent commercial parody that didn’t make the list is probably the Jamie Lee Curtis commercial for Activia, because you can never get enough of women eating yogurt.
Domino's Pizza: Sacrificing Our Delivery Drivers So We Can Use Our New Slogan
Domino’s has a mildly amusing television campaign right now to promote their new slogan “You Got 30 Minutes,” but the fine print on Domino’s site points out that this should be taken only as a suggestion, not a service guarantee: “Because safety is a priority “You Got 30 Minutes™” is not a guarantee but an estimate. You may get more.” A former Domino’s delivery guy is not impressed: “Some douchebag ad exec wants to trick customers into believing that the ’30 minutes or it’s free’ guarantee is back, then leave it to the delivery drivers to explain to inevitably angry customers why their pizza isn’t free when it gets there in 31 minutes.”
Discover The Fairsley Difference!
This fake ad-battle from “Mr. Show”—a big city supermarket chain squares off against a naïve local grocer—perfectly captures a certain type of aggressive, scorched-earth advertising style usually reserved for political campaigns.
Great Moments In Commercial History: "Al'z Place"
The Stay Free! daily blog was watching the telly and nearly spit out its wheatgrass juice when it noticed an ad for a senior care facility in Brooklyn that has blessed its Alzeimer’s ward with a delightful moniker. They call it, “Al’z place.” That marketing decisions strikes us as, shall we say, unfortunate. What’s the message here? “He forgot his name and so did we so we just call him Al.”
Salesgenie.com President Apologizes For Offensive SuperBowl Commercials
Salesgenie.com president Vinod Gupta has apologized for two offensive SuperBowl ads featuring animated pandas that spoke with painfully stereotypical “Chinese” accents and an “animated salesman named Ramesh who speaks with an Indian or other South Asian accent.”:
“We never thought anyone would be offended,” said Mr. Gupta, who developed and wrote both commercials himself.
Tivo Says E-Trade Commercial Was Most Watched Super Bowl Spot
Tivo has announced that E-Trade’s talking, trading, barfing baby was the most watched ad by Tivo subscribers during the Super Bowl, followed by the Pepsi spot where Justin Timberlake got hit in the crotch, followed by the Doritos ad where a giant mouse wailed on a man eating chips. Tivo “sampled 10,000 households using anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data” to come up with the rankings.
Super Bowl Ads Are Designed To Fuel Mindless Buying
Companies are paying $90,000 per second tonight to get their products before our recession-fearing eyes, and they plan to get their money’s worth. Tonight’s advertisers will use an array of tactics designed with one purpose: motivating us to buy their products.
Some Of The Year's Worst Ad Concepts
Suicide—even if it’s performed by a robot, and then only in a robot’s nightmare—just doesn’t move products. People don’t respond to suicide. Or football players acting all grossed out by seeing two straight dudes accidentally touch lips. Or a digitally reanimated zombie Redenbacher with skin so lifeless you’d swear he just climbed out of a casket at the funeral home. These were among the big losers picked by Stuart Elliot at the New York Times this year as he reviewed the advertising world’s more unconventional spots of 2007.
Healthy Cereal Commercial Or Metaphorical Poop Fest?
A commercial for Kellogg’s All-Bran seems to have gone back to the source and adopted the crazy butt-obsessed attitude of the company’s forefather, because as the actor talks in the foreground about how great his cereal makes him feel, in the background you can see several over-the-top metaphors for… well, let’s just say “pulling an I-beam out of my wall” is going to take on a whole new meaning. And in case it’s not explicit enough, wait for the tag line.
Barbie Teaches Credit Cards 101: "You Never Run Out Of Money!"
Fashion Fever Shopping Boutique, the correctly named Barbie toy, features a built-in credit card swiper and a life-size credit card for young children to use when buying outfits for their dolls. According to the Amazon website, “Once the balance hits zero, it will reset so you can continue to shop.”
FlyJumper Ad Promises To Make You Awesome, Then Rich, Then Dead
In the U.S. they’re called PoweriZers, but in the U.K. those springy pogo-boot things are called FlyJumpers, and the company that sells them has come up with a bizarre ad that appeals to… materialistic and amoral fame-seekers who are suicidal, we guess? The commercial—which is available on the Amazon.co.uk product info page—shows a bank robber making an amazing escape on his FlyJumpers, and getting away with thousands of pound notes. Then, inexplicably, it turns into a scene from “Final Destination.”
Direct Buy: Pay $5,000 To Save?
Consumer Reports investigated wholesale shopping club “Direct Buy.” to see if the deals lived up to the commercials. They were unimpressed.
The 12 Types Of Commercials
Like con artists, TV ads love to come up against a naive mark who thinks he’s above their eerie powers of manipulation. But don’t worry–Slate is here to ruin your innocence, and make you all the tougher for it. Their slideshow, “There are 12 Kinds of Ads in the World,” draws back the curtains of modern advertising to reveal a classic piece of insider knowledge from one of the industry’s most famous ad men, Donald Gunn, one-time creative director for the renowned Leo Burnett ad agency.
Visa Tap-N-Go Ads Piss Us Off
We loathe these Visa commercials. They show commerce going along like clockwork. People paying with their tap-and-go Visa card. Getting their donuts. Until one guy pay with cash. Everything screeches to a halt. He gets looks from the cashier and other customers.
