Order Now! But Wait!
(Hey! Didn’t they say ‘Hurry, today only!‘ yesterday, too?)
Some people, I’ve discovered, like to complicate things. Not me. I’m not complicated. I’m just a simple guy, with simple dreams and simple desires: some food, some books, a ridiculously large music collection, and some more food. Just keep it simple, and don’t confuse me.
Commercials confuse me. Though, to be fair, lots of things confuse me. Al Roker’s appeal, for one thing. People who get excited about lawn care, for another. How vampires went from scary to sexy. Neckties. Okra.
Why is black-and-white Tarzan’s hair slicked back, and with what? Who did Adam and Eve’s sons marry? And why #2 pencils? What happened to all the #1 pencils? Did somebody use them all up stabbing vampires? It’s confusing.
I remember when commercials were easy. Some polite human with sand-blasted teeth would point to a product, strongly suggest you buy it, and then shut up. Nice. Simple. And no drippy gore on any undead teeth.
But commercials these days are obtuse and obscure, like some conceptual foreign film. A nasal duck with a limited vocabulary attacks a kid delivering Chinese food: buy our insurance! An anthropomorphic frog mourns on its lily pad, surrounded by an amphibian ‘misery management’ support group: buy our beer! Sometimes you have to watch a commercial several times (and you’ll get to) before you figure out what they’re selling.
And then there are the commercials that don’t even attempt to sell you anything. They’re just on a PR binge: they just want you to like them. You know the type:
Here at Global Offshore Sweatshops, we don’t make the skateboard: we make the skateboard faster. We don’t make the bat: we make the bat harder, so we can sell the bat to thug kids in street gangs who’ve outgrown skateboards. We don’t make the computers: we make the casings that coat the nails that fasten the shelves that line the walls that house the computers that are hacked by the thug kids who then steal your identity and, on weekends, hit people with bats. Here at Global Offshore Sweatshops, we don’t make the stuff you buy: we make the stuff you buy hurt you.
So let’s look at some examples. I’ll describe actual ads that companies have produced and aired on TV, and you tell me what product these people are wanting you to buy.
…if you can…
Ready? Good luck!
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A driver with an expensive non-American car and chiseled facial features is barreling down the middle of a middle-of-nowhere straightaway. Suddenly, a military support plane screams into view, extends its mid-air refueling snake, and refills the driver’s coffee cup.
Order now! But…what?
a) A new car
b) An after-market sunroof
c) An ego reduction kit
A bubbly woman in white works in a stark white, horizon-less store that houses stark white shelves packed with vague, colorful boxes. Her name is Flo, she’s a part-time biker, she has a merry-go-round, and she’s often visited by guardedly nervous men who wear light blue suits and have no spine.
Order now! But…what?
a) Car insurance
b) Wimp repellent
c) Dr. Seuss’s new book, ‘Horton Hears an Emasculated Who!’
A young Asian-looking woman sees air bubbles in a store aquarium. A young Indian-looking man sees workers mixing up concrete in a wheelbarrow. A young soccer mom sees kids having a water balloon fight. They all rush home, fire up an online conference, and prototype a brilliant water delivery system that looks suspiciously like a cement-spackled party favor in a fish tank.
Order now! But…what?
a) Online conference software
b) A super-sized pallet of paper towels
c) A Toys-R-Us ‘My First Aqueduct’ kit
A cocky, evil man who goes by the unlikely name of ‘Mayhem’ and is indestructible (you just don’t get cockier than that) gets hit by a train, bounces off your car, gets electrocuted, is sucked through a large, bladed farm implement, gets attacked by escaped mental patients wielding #1 pencils, and ends up crashing through your roof.
Order now! But…what?
a) Property insurance
b) An ethics-optional, results-oriented realtor
c) A machine-washable anti-Mayhem parka
A lady wants to quit smoking. We know how badly she wants to quit because she takes long walks with her boyfriend and her kids do their homework in the kitchen. A disembodied announcer’s voice recommends she try a product that has absolutely nothing to do with smoking. On the plus side, however, the product can cause “occasional, discomforting side-effects” ranging from dry mouth to suicide, including medical conditions so vile that we won’t discuss them here, but they rhyme with ‘spectral breeding.’ In rare cases, totally innocent dogs in entirely different neighborhoods may spontaneously explode.
Order now! But…what?
a) Anti-depression medicine
b) Pet-store-issue “Now – in your time of loss” sympathy card value packs
c) Another parka
A grizzled man’s aging muscle car overheats in the desert. Oddly enough, this happens near the only gas station within 450 miles. At the station, the man grabs a bottle of water, refills his radiator, and drives away. He never bothers to speak to the equally grizzled proprietor. We’re pretty sure he didn’t pay for the water, either.
Order now! But…what?
a) Sexual dysfunction medicine
b) Three online global activists who prototype water delivery systems
c) Eight weeks of etiquette classes
A father and daughter are shooting hoops in their driveway, accompanied by a giant imaginary tiger that’s standing on its hind legs and grinning like Al Roker on assignment in Phoenix. They finish and go inside for breakfast. As they eat, the tiger stands in the background, grinning and yelling about something being great. Other than a red bandanna, the tiger is stark naked.
Order now! But…what?
a) Breakfast cereal
b) Tickets to the annual ‘Fauna in the Sauna’ safari at the Playboy Mansion
c) Anti-psychotic medication
The walls in your home are being attacked by a computer-generated monster that looks like something Stephen King might have dreamed up one night after eating too much pizza.
Order now! But…what?
a) Pest control
b) Martha Stewart’s new book, ’101 Affordable Ways To Entertain In A Condemned Building’
c) Stephen King’s new book, ‘Stomach’
A wealthy lady takes a decorative plate from her curio cabinet, grabs a hammer, and smashes the plate, causing her maid to momentarily stop cleaning. So the lady fires the maid, then logs in to Monster.com and reactivates her ad: ‘WANTED: Unappreciated menial to do condescending work for insulting wages. Preference given to illegals who hail from predominately Catholic countries.’ The lady then grabs a shard from the shattered china, runs to the museum, and uses it to repair a painting.
Order now! But…what?
a) Investment funds
b) A robot floor sweeper
c) A robot floor sweeper with a Catholic accent
There’s a battle for Earth. A pudgy, mute animated character is slinging tires at a giant marauding gas tank. The giant gas tank has monstrous tentacles, each terminating in a gas nozzle. It’s hard to pinpoint the mute animated character: he could be the puffy white mascot from a tire company in France, or that giant grinning nautical marshmallow man from ‘Ghostbusters,’ or a mid-winter Barney Frank.
Order now! But…what?
a) Document-management services
b) Barack Obama’s new book, ‘How I Liberated France’
c) A flex-fuel vehicle with the ‘Marauding Giant Collision Alert, and Floor Mats’ option package
A man in an unbelievably cheap suit and what is, hands-down, the world’s worst hairpiece, looks directly into the camera and asks you several times if you’ve been injured.
Order now! But…what?
a) Legal services
b) A handgun and several rounds of ammunition
c) O.J. Simpson’s new book, ‘I Didn’t Injure You, But If I Had, Here’s How I Would Have Done It’
~~-~~-~~-~~
Well, I hope this little exercise helped better prepare you for America’s unending, ongoing onslaught of TV commercials. After all, in the Battle for the Wallet Bulge, you need to gird your loins, although that could chafe your … um … girdage.
And when you get to the ‘ enough TV already!’ stage, give me a shout. I can get you a sweet deal on a bat.
Louisville, that is. Not Vampire.
