GM stop making me love you!

Even before GM went bankrupt, I was never a big fan of any of their brands. Except for Pontiac, so I was none too happy when they kept the boring and pedestrian Buick brand but killed off the most badass of American auto brands.

But This new GM ad is phenomenal.

 

Going into it I didn't know what it was an ad for, and between the clips of Animal House and Popeye and Truman's reelection, I was pretty sold regardless of what product it was for.

The fact that they actually thank the American public for helping them get back on top is a genius P.R. decision.

In conclusion: GM! Stop playing with my emotions. It was so much easier when you were the bad guy. Making boring cars and killing off storied brands like Pontiac and Oldsmobile.

Now when I drive by a GM dealer all I'm gonna be able to think of is John Belushi and eating spinach.

Robet Carlyle not stabbing you in the face with his drink

I read in Advertising age recently that this Johnie Walker Scotch ad is widely regarded as "The Best Ad of 2010 which does not star Isaiah Mustafa."

I hadn't seen it before because its a 6 minute long short film which I assume you would watch if you went to Johnny Walker's website. And despite enjoying a wide array of hooch, I don't really end up on websites for alcoholic beverages unless I go there to find material for this site (see the Miller High Life redesign post).



This ad/shortfilm/35 second bagpipe concert stars Robert Carlyle, who is still most famous for his awesome turn as total asshat and psychopath Franco Begbie in Trainspotting (Despite his having appeared in 37 projects and counting since then).

I think Carlyle is a really underrated actor, I've never seen him in a film and not thought he was awesome in it, even if the movie around him wasn't good.* He does a great job in this ad, but I'm only so interested in this history of this product, I think the ad appeals more to people who already enjoy Johnnie Walker than to someone like me who has never tried it.

I first started trying to write this post back in September but kept getting just past the two minute mark of the ad and remembering this ad is 1/3 the length of an episode of Family Guy and its for a brand of Scotch I've never tried because I consider it overpriced, and already have my favorite brand of Scotch.

Though now that I see the productions values on this ad I see why Johnnie Walker costs way more than I think it is worth. Think about how much money per bottle must go into Walker's advertising, especially when you consider they somehow found six minutes in a row in Scotland during which it was not raining, which means they must have had the whole crew for this ad camped out in the highlands for the better part of a year, trying to do this one long take and being constantly interrupted halfway through by rain, or snow, or lightening, or sheep falling from the sky.

Compare this to Glenfiddich's entire ad budget of the year 2010, which consists solely of 2 items:

1. Print labels with the word "Glenfiddich" on them, adhere to bottle so customer knows which bottle to buy.
2. Taste amazing so customers choose to buy bottle.

I'm biased toward Glenfiddich because the awesome Korean War vet who lives next door to my parents drinks Glenfiddich, and only Glenfiddich, and he is the coolest man ever.

So I guess you can add a third item to that list:

3. Convince Bill Tucker to drink Glenfiddich. Have him be awesome and spend most of the 1950's jumping out of airplanes. Repeat.

You may be thinking to yourself right now, "He drinks Glenfiddich because a paratrooper he knows does? That's not a very good reason."

To which  I respond: You clearly have not met Bill Tucker.


Footnote(s)
*I guess he is sort of the Scottish Chirstopher Walken in that respect. Though I think Chris Walken himself is somehow the Scottish equivalent of Christopher Walken, though mostly only in the movie "Scotland, PA" where he plays MacDuff as William Shakespeare originally intended him.

I mostly added this footnote so I could state for the record an idea i've had for a while (with additional material provided by C. Kevin Mauer):

There needs to be a buddy cop movie starring Christopher Walken and Williem Defoe. And in this film Christopher Walken needs to do a Williem Defoe impression the entire film, and Williem Defoe needs to do a Walken impression the entire film.** I don't know what the crime they would be solving would be and I don't really care, you could remake Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! for all I care, and as long as it has those two guys doing impressions of eachother while solving a crime and shooting stuff it would be the best movie ever.

**This screen story copyright 2010 Strictly Commercials

String dance time!

Based on the first three episodes, Conan's new show does a pretty good job of bringing back the weird wonderful and sometimes excessively stupid humor that made me love conan so much back in middle school and high school, as opposed to the more stayed safe humor he evolved into into in late 2000s that made me switch to watching Crab Ferguson*.
I saw the Conan using  the masturbating bear in one of the first bits in the first episode as demonstrating to their audience they ain't be playing it safe this time. Especially since they were afraid to use the bear** until his final weeks of the tonight show.
I am glad conan is back on the air, but I will miss covering his awesome ads here, if only because it gives me am excuse to post awesome clips from the late 1990s.
(Some of which I will post below later. I promise. I mean unless I forget to.)
Footnotes:
*as much as i love conan amd grew up watching him, i have to say i think Craig is easily the best late nigh host i have seen and his show just keeps getting funnier.
**or banned from using the bear by nbc. I never could find out if conan was told by nbc to make his show less weird.

Dean Winters arose from the grave to bring you this ad.

These commercials are okay but not great, but the concept and script is made oh so much better due to them starring Dean Winters. Dean, who Liz's half wit Irish-American boyfriend on 30 rock, was always my favorite reoccurring character on that show.

As a half wit Irish-American, I always liked the character. And Winters portrayal of him made him as endearing and earnest as he was obnoxious.*

Beyond Winters seeming like a supercool guy the thing that inspired me to cover this beyond the 30 rock connection was that it is in all sincerity pretty amazing he is alive to do these ads.

I'm the last person who should try and type anything sincere, but let me just point you toward this New York post Article on Winters and say that I'm very glad he recovered in order to play Mr. Mayhem.

As I said, the ads are good but not great, I'm just posting it to support a dude who played an Irish-American hockey fan on T.V. There are several in the series, but AllState fortunately made one of them that uses clips from all of them so you can just watch this and get the gist: (sort of a trailer for a series of commercials if you will. I did not realize one could have a preview for commercials until just now.)




Footnote(s)
*Actually the character would probably be my favorite anyway just because one of the plot points is that he is die hard hockey fan.And a fan of a shitty team to boot. I can't find the clip of my scene with winters on the show so I will paraphrase:

Liz: I was so mad I was ready to storm in here and murder you!
Dean Winters: I wish you had. I wish I was dead. The Islanders lost tonight.
Liz: But doesn't that, you know, happen a lot?

The End (Go Tavares)

If more of Politics was like this I might hate Politicans less.

I haven't been following any of the Illinois Mid Term Election races despite having a bunch of relatives near Chicago, so I have no idea about the actual politics of some guy named Quinn who is running for Governor in land of Lincoln. (which is also the land of Rod Blagojevich, but I'm sure the State Government would prefer we focus on Lincoln.)

But politics is about perception not reality, and whoever did this ad for Quinn make the Quinn campaign out to be the coolest cats in town.

A lot of people say they are disheartened because political TV ads these days are way too negative. I say that's poppy cock, attack ads are only annoying if that are badly done, the probably is that all political ads normally seem to be written with six year olds as the target audience. Attack ads can be awesome if done well, as this is this ad proves it.

Oh and if you are reading this on November 2nd be sure to vote. If all the candidates in your district suck, just write in Woodrow Wilson. CBS cares. 




Via Warming Glow

Nick Swardson

  (Pictured from left to right: Thomas Lennon, Awesome short-shorts, Nick Swardson, Awesome green belly shirt, Banana, Sexy green stripey socks.)

I remember loving Nick Swardson's Comedy Central special back in High School. He has done some supporting roles and writing for Adam Sandler productions over the years, but I was excited to find out via subway ads that he has a show this season on Comedy Central. I have no idea how good the show will be, but the trailer for it is pretty awesome:



Maybe its just because I like the orginal Dos Equis commercials so much, but this parody, and the Steve Nash parody I had on here a few months back are both equally awesome. I'm also glad to see that Mr. Swardson finally got to build his own gay robot*. I remember a short skit he did on an album years ago** about a Gay Robot, and I'm sure when you write a two minute skit about a robot who is gay, you never expect that 7 years later Comedy Central will let you actually build your own damn gay robot.

I think going from being an unknown comedian writing jokes about gay robots to actually being able to build a finely crafted Gay Robot on Viacom's dime is the best possible realization of the american dream.



Footnote(s)
*Quick disclaimer for the sake of Political Correctness: I understand why making jokes about someone's sexuality is still a taboo topic (see the recent controversy over Vince Vaughn's character using the word gay in a movie trailer as an example.) So I figured I should take a second to point out that the humor of Nick's Gay Robot, at least in the original sketch, was not that it was bad that the robot was gay, but that it was funny because the Robot was really horny because he was the only Gay Robot ever built.

**According to Wikipedia***  this originated on a sketch Nick wrote and preformed on an Adam Sandler CD. Also apparently because of this there is somehow a wiki article simply titled "Gay Robot." I'm glad we live in a world that has an online encyclopedia with an entry title "Gay Robot"

***Which has never been wrong ever as this video evidence shows:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Wikilobbying
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Conan Advertising News Part 2000

The domain name hornymanatee.com is owned by NBC.

Really. Trying going to it. Conan said it on air as an ad lib and NBC bought it to make sure they weren't retroactively advertising something obscene.

So Conan may have been fired and NBC took down all videos ever of him, but he will live on anytime anyone accesses the NBC main site by typing in Hornymanatee.com
Conan. I salute you.




Also this week in Conan advertising news: Team Coco had two really clever forms of non-traditional promotion this week that I thought I should address:

1. A god damned actual blimp that is flying around the country. with a website you can track it on here. (My favorite part of the site, is that at night when the blimp is docked at the airport the status updates to "The Blimp is sleeping." This makes me visualize a bunch of little blimps covered in blankets snoring side by side like the baby elephants in dumbo.

2. A live feed of the production offices for 24 hours straight which included puppets announcing the guest lineup for Conan's first week of shows, along with a contest to vote for who his first guest should be (below)



The 24 hour live feed's final minutes were what appears to be footage from the hotel lobby at 2:00 Am during a Furries convention:

(I didn't post the actual video because it's minutes of everyone dancing while the guy dressed as a taco yells "Go Taco!" which gets old exactly as quickly as you would imagine.)

You can read the official hour by hour recap here.




Speaking of Advertising and Conan, I have been trying to find one of my favorite ever fake ads. Its an old Conan from back when the used to get preempted by the NBA on NBC and end up being on at 3am or some such nonsense.

Since they tape the same day and knew when this was going to happen, they started a segment called, "No one's watching," which made fun of the fact that they could do anything they wanted. These included appearances by the always controversial masturbating bear and jokes about how so few people where watching the show they couldn't even get anyone to buy advertising timeslots.

Below is one of the fake ads that Conan said was from the biggest sponser they could get for that evening. Unfortunately whoever loaded it chopped off the punchline so i will have to describe it to you after the video.



After the guy falls down the title card for the name and address of the store comes up and is read by the announcer. It read as follows:

Shoes!

Down by the street next to the big building.

But what really sells the gag is the voice of the Conan staffers they had read it. It uses the same two unlike voices reading a small amount of text gag employed by Conan's Secrets* videos. The guy who says "Down by the street next to the big building" mumbles it to the point of incoherence. Conan, It will be good when you are back. Glad I have Craig and Colbert and Stewart to keep me warm at night till then.**

Footnote(s)

*What was that sketch? vola:

**That got creepy at the end there.