http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...10172255655672

Am I the only one who finds this commercial depressing?

"gee, thanks for inviting me to spend time with my own kids."

how sad.

Haven't seen that one on TV here yet but it is pretty sad. You gotta wonder who thought something like can sell a car.

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Earth First! We'll mine the rest later.

Geez. I don't even know where to begin with that one. Not right at all.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

In my situation, it's across an ocean, and an SUV isn't an option.

Ug.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

I love the Volvo commercial where the little girl can't stuff a sock in it¹ long enough for dad to buckle her in and get into the vehicle himself. I live that commercial literally every single day of my life.

¹I say that in pure sarcasm. I love it that my little girl is so excited about her young life and eager to share her new experiences with her daddy.

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In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1

I would, especially since exactly what they want to happen, is...right here on this very forum.

Marketing sucks, because it's so damn good it works.

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Actually, my roommate (whose parents are divorced) and I talked about that, and we actually thought it was kind of nice. Presumably, the father has some sort of regular visitation, but the parents can actually stand to be around each other long enough to go as a group. She'd really like that. (I'd like to see my father at all, but not in his current state--he's been dead since 1983.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I really like the commercial where...



I don't see it or hear it.



Now, that's a good commercial!

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No, no, you're all missing the point. Ford's are the best cars for divorced parents, obviously. If that couple had had a GM car, surely the woman would not have invited the man along. Only Ford vehicles are so nice as to make a family be able to stand each other again for sevral hours at a time.

My ex-wife and I have a very good relationship. Other than special events, I see my kids just about every day. Even though she's married, we still do a few non-kids things together, like an occasional lunch. This weekend she and her husband are taking our older daughter to a state swim meet, and I'm watching the other two, plus her son from her current marriage. He comes over a lot.

We both felt that we didn't want our kids to be used as weapons to hurt each other. Also, we both knew that we each contributed to the failure to our marriage, so no one is no blame. For us, we both like each other, but we just couldn't live together.

My hat is off to you and your ex-wife, jrkeller. What a wonderfully responsible way of handling a marriage that didn't take.

Your kids are very lucky people.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

ok ok, picture the commercial without the "thanks for inviting me" line. Instead, what if the guy says, "this was a good idea, let's do it again." And the woman say, "yeah."

To me that completely changes the commercial. That's not nearly so sad.

What's wrong with

'Thanks for sleeping with my best friend and ruinning my life!'?

I'm just sayin...

Oh oh, and an update, she pulls away and you see a view from in front of him on the corner where behind him is a slum with a crack dealer and a prostitute, and a homeless guy is urinating on his dufflebag. I'm thinkin Will Ferrill as the 'Father' in this Classic Commercial Remake.

And the Volvo commercial? Leave it the same, mostly. At the end the 'Father' with a harried look on his face drives the car over the nearest ledge. As we watch the car explode at the bottom of the ravine the screen goes black with the words 'Volvo, Finally a quite car.' are centered on it.

There's a car commercial (or spoof?) that I've always gotten a kick out of. It was this neglected GF or SO who is talking angrily to a camcorder about how her guy likes his pimped out pickup more than he likes her. Then it zooms back and you can see she's at the bottom of a cliff. She turns, waves big and screams "PUSH IT!"

Some of her friends at the top of the cliff shove the truck over it. It crashes its way down to the bottom (with her cackling the whole while), landing on its wheels, intact. As soon as the dust clears enough so she can see that, she starts screaming in frustration.

Not sure, but wasn't that a toyota commercial?

Edit: There's a link to it on www.kontraband.com (with parts of the site NSFW, but they're usually fairly well marked now) in the commercials section.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Yes, it's the same venue as the meteorite commercial where it hits the truck, wipes out the campsite and the truck is unscathed.

Well I don't see many people here suddenly saying that the commercial makes them want to run out and buy a Ford. Regardless, I see your point if you subscribe to the view that any discussion, good or bad, is what the company wants.

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Earth First! We'll mine the rest later.

Sometimes marketing isn't about selling products, it's about making people aware of them.

Take the 'Head-on' commercials -- everyone I know is aware of this product, even though no one I know has tried it. Although if I had a bad headache one day, and no pills to take, and someone offered Head-on, I'd probably try it. But I wouldn't go buy the product due to the nature of the commercials.

In a similar fashion, the commercials saying things like 'we don't make the product, but we make the product better' aren't trying to sell as much as they are trying to highten awareness.

But this Ford commercial doesn't seem to fit either way. Just who is the intended audience here? Certainly not the traditional concept of a family unit (although perhaps a more realistic one). Is it divorced parents? Or maybe children who think they can pressure their divorced parents into doing things together if they would just buy a Ford? It's confusing.

Sometimes I wonder where people get the idea that they want to go into advertising as a career. I often think that are on the same level with people who aspire to become lifelong 'refuse removal technicians'.

I like Glenn Becks ripoff of that commercial

GlenON apply directly to the eardrums
GlenON apply directly to the eardrums
GlenON apply directly to the eardrums

What a hoot.

Or establishing an image. Some versions of the ipod commercials have told you how much storage space an ipod has, but most of them don't. Most of them just show people dancing and having a good time. So the message is, "there is this thing called ipod, really super cool people have them, they are fun."

Very effective in my opinion. Shows that they know who their customers are. All they have to do is suggest that this is something you're going to want to check out. The potential customers are smart enough to find it and play with it, and then the ipod sells itself.

My thought process with Head On went like this:

This commercial annoys me. The company that makes this product must be stupid. I do not want to use any product made by a stupid company - they probably aren't smart enough to have reasonable quality control. Still, I wonder what the product does. *looks it up on the internet* ah, it is a homeopathic thing, that means that it doesn't actually work. That explains the commercial - legally, they cannot say that it cures headaches, because there is no scientific evidence that it does. The only thing that they can possible say in their commercials is, "apply to forehead." So if I have a headache, doing nothing will be as effective as using this product.

Case closed.