11 Commercial Clichès (and I hate them all)

published August 22, 2009

If you don't know by now, I despise 97% of advertising on TV. I despise how much of everyone's lives are wasted with commercials. 8 minutes for every half hour added up through your lifetime is a lot of wasted time. The worst part is that they are all the same thing and they use the same clichès over and over again. Occasionally you will come upon the clever commercial, but they are few and far between. I absolutely hate these 11 clichès you will see in almost every single TV commercial. With this in mind, I applied these strategies on my own ads!

Seriously, just do a google image search for ""

 

1) Repeating the product name, phone number or website 50 million times - I'm sure the marketing departments of every company have a theory that if they pound the product and phone number and website into your heads, that they will get business. The result is anger. These can be in jingles, or disguised as people on the street trying to say "Freetriplescore.com" three times fast, or just pure annoying repitition. Sometimes they are a little more subtle, but it's there. For example "Show me the Carfax" over and over again. They pound it into our heads, and as a result, we buy their stupid products. As much as I hate this clichè, it has proven over and over to be effective. People are dumb.

Well hell, this ad isn't half bad!

 

2) Tons of people finishing off each others sentences - These don't even make sense to me. They have 30 people talking and they cut to the next person before finishing off the sentence. Perhaps they're are trying to convey multiple people satisfied with the product. They change camera angles, cut about 4 times per second. They aren't funny. They aren't clever. I can't even remember the product they were trying to sell. I think it was a bank or a car or something. I'd also consider bunch of people doing different stuff in this clichè, like the Beck's commercial, or the majority of McDonalds commercials.

Not exactly my demographic, but I'll take it!

 

3) The same person with 50 million camera angle changes - If they can't get 30 people, they have the same person talking. They change the camera angle on this person hundreds of times over a few seconds. Vehix.com is the main perpetrator of this, but I've seen many many more, especially low budget commercials and infomercials that are guilty as well.

I should've chosen someone with more range.

 

4) The jingle meant to get stuck in your head - This one puts me into a rage fitting of kings. If it wasn't for the mute button, I would've destroyed many TV's. Jack in the Box had clerver commercials at one point, but they've digressed into simple jingles to get stuck in your head. Freecreditreport.com is horribly guilty of this (in addition to #1). You'll hear these all the time and not really know it either. Sometimes they'll take a famous song and alter it or try to associate their product with a mainstream song. In the end it's horribly annoying, especially when you hear certain jingles more than the music you actually like.

It's stuck in my head already!

 

5) The punchline music - So many commercials attempt and fail to present a joke of some sort. If you pay attention to how many are trying to get you to chuckle and fail, you'll be shocked. They always have this music after the funny moment, which I shall dub the "punchline music." The punchline music is meant as a queue for you to laugh. The result is non-laughter.

Punchline!

 

6) The sound meant to rouse your attention - This one really gets my chonies in a bundle. They also do this clearly on purpose. They put a sound meant to get your attention. Examples are a doorbell, a phone ring, a cell phone beep, a car alarm, etc. You're minding your own business, cooking or checking e-mail, and you hear a text message arrived. In excitement, you go to check it out, only to realize it was a god damn commercial. This is purposeful and malicious, and it works. Radio commercials do this all the time too. These need to be outlawed.

Now that I have your attention, go check out the boring shit that doesn't have breasts!

 

7) The product that helps your uncomfortable situation - This one is just dumb and it makes no sense. You're in a situation, whether trying to hit on a girl or spiling over someones medicine cabinet. Well this wonderful product makes you say or do the clever thing, or it will help you "get away." There are dozens guilty of this including Twix, Mentos, Minute Maid, Snickers, and Southwest Airlines.

Phoebe made a lot of us need a few minutes.

 

8) Preventative Bullshit / Scare Tactics - I would lump pretty much every single pharmaceutical commercial and insurace commercial here. You might have diabetes, you might have acid reflux, you might have herpes, you might have thousands of illnesses. Buy our product so you can prevent from getting these. I'm so sick of 'preventative' type of products, because there are millions that you'd need to prevent everything. Fuck it, use it when you need it, not to prevent something that might not even happen.

"The Archnemesis - Tearing asses apart since 2002."

 

9) "Times are Tough" - One thing I hate in ads, is people whining and bitching about how hard things are, and how times are tough, or how the doctor had no feelings when he told me about my disease. Then they turn around and say how this medicine helped make it better, or how this payment based support group helped my emotions, or how you can take advantage of the tough times through some sort of loan scheme. I too often hear the clichè "times are tough" or "difficult times" and more. in the words of the great Arnold Schwartzeneggar, "Stop whining."

Do it. Do it for Road House. Do it for Swayze.

 

10) Overly cheesy or expressive narrator - First off, there are a couple commercials with a narrator that talks relatively normally. The vast majority are these cheesy over the top voices. This voices automatically turns me off to the commercials. I just can't trust a cheesy voice saying "Seventy percent off!!! At Joseph A. Bank!!" The worst is when they introduce characters trying to have a normal conversation, but they become incredibly cheesy and start saying all the details of the company that helped them. It'sa shortcut to untrustworthiness if you ask me.

Subtle, but true.

 

11) Our product makes woman(or men) want to have sex with you - Using Colgate makes your smile better so women will have sex with you! Our deodorant makes you smell so good that women can't resist you! Lose 15 pounds in one week so every man will have sex with you! People say sex sells, and the perception of their product turning you into a sex machine is one of the greatest lies to the American public.

The Archnemesis always keeps it classy.

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