Perhaps one of the most horribly hilarious direct TV ads EVER! Welltabs will make millions. We just hope this ad doesn’t scam too many of the desperate before it gets pulled by the FTC and indictments are handed out. Watch it now because my good guess is the Youtube link will not be available in a few months.
Could there be a more perfect sounding SNL parody name than Welltabs with ‘positive mood technology’?! Brilliant! Welltabs work well whether you’re a paranoid schizophrenic or just feeling down because you were fired and your spouse left you. If you worry about money, health, if you don’t sleep well, if you’re scared, exhausted, or if life has simply turned against you, these little puppies are game changers. Take a bunch and you’ll feel more confident, more relaxed, stronger, healthier and happier. They’ll even help you look better.
The Welltabs miracle has trumped the entire pharma industry! (Not that we put much faith in them either — look what’s going on with cancer drugs shortage these days). The first time I saw this, I waited and waited for the punchline, as it teased cliche after cliche like a disciplined comedian. This is an absolutely brilliantly, cringingly, awful gem. I’ll spare whoever was responsible by not drudging up credits (or should I say, police lineup):
First of all, “What The F*ck?!” is this print campaign for Stedfast paper shredders, out of DDB Mudra, India. The fever-dream visuals are accompanied by a single line: “They’ll never put the story back together.”
Who is ‘they’? And what’s it supposed to mean? That if you shred this image you’ll never be able to explain it? If that’s it, they could have gotten the point across in a much more intriguing way by using a very simple amusing or odd visual that defies your ability to describe it — the thousand word thing. Cudos, however, to photographer Amol Jadhav for the wildly ambitious shoots. Reminds me of a Mad magazine interp of photographer Gregory Crewdson.
According to this ad by CLM, BBDO France, the quality of HP printing is so lifelike, it’s almost like having your actual baby pinned to the wall of your cubicle. Even if you have to ignore it because you’ve got work to do. Leave it to the French to give us a humorous take on child abuse to illustrate the generic promise. You can see other ads in the campaign at scaryideas.com.
We think that dispensing anything, even toilet paper, out a butthole is creepy. Call us old fashioned, but we have no idea why the folks at By Far in Denmark thought this’d be a winning way to draw attention to Silk Soft’s recycled tp. We don’t think we’d be able to keep our eyes on the hole long enough to register the product name. Granted, there are some who…
We uncovered this ad for FiveSatar ranges in our archives. After our initial freak, we wondered if it was meant to be a chilling reminder, or worse, a parody. Check out the bones protruding from the backs of the famished creatures closest to the bottom.
Whatever the intention, our take is it’s downright creepy as hell. What’s yours?
We know you’ve seen this a thousand times, but how can we not include it in the Creepy-Ville gallery. Our favorite thing is, of course, the unibrows.
While the connection between one eye and two looks at your taxes doesn’t quite track — we’re guessing the original board presented by Campbell Mithun made a much tighter, funnier connection– we do get the premise loud and clear.
That’s our take. What’s yours?
(Have an ad or TV spot you want to rant or rave about? Go to ‘How to Review’)
This ad for Schmitt Sohne Wines suggest that you to go to your local wine store and ask for a little German. We did and it didn’t go well. We’re not saying there aren’t lots of uses for a little German fella around the house — stacking stones, organizing the pots and pans on the bottom shelves, whatever — but the woman in this ad has chosen him as her private bath-time companion. Of all the men she might fantasize to be with, she’s chosen this little wide-eyed character.
At our New Year’s Eve party, on the chance we were missing something, we showed this ad to a few woman we wouldn’t have minded sharing a bath with ourselves. It did not elicit a single giggle or smile. It did receive a few ‘eeew’s’ and a couple of off-color remarks questioning our own intentions for showing them the ad.
Which leads us to the conclusion that the idea is not only a bad pun, but a creepy, dumb execution of a bad pun.
We hope that Schmitt Sohne does not intend for this goofy little character to be its Yellow Tail. In this country selling a Reisling is dificult enough. Pegging it to a midget in lederhosen would be just plain silly, if it weren’t so creepy.
That’s where we stand here in Creepy-Ville. What do you think? Post your thoughts below.
These slightly vintage ads from Pioneer and TBWA/Chiat/Day for a line of TV’s called Kuro, are so visually freaky and so filled with confusing (and ominous) promises, one of us swears they gave her the nightsweats.
Leading with the line ‘seeing and hearing like never before’ they take a mash-up of the senses approach, collaging human body parts onto places where they don’t belong. The result is as disturbing as can be.
Our guess is that this ‘unexpected visual approach’ is supposed to make us re-think the old ways we watch and listen to TV. But the problem is immediately apparent in the lack of thought that went into the cliché’d promise in the copy: ‘Go beyond sight. Go beyond sound.’ That’s a tough premise to back up, for sure. What the hell is beyond sight? X-ray sight? No sight? And what’s beyond sound? The vacuum of space? The copy continues with, ‘Enter a world where you look with fresh eyes and listen with new ears.’ How does that work? Are they offering a trade-in on the eyes and ears I’ve already got? The copy completes with, ‘A world where you don’t just see, you feel. You don’t just hear. You touch. You don’t just watch, you truly and fully experience.’
Years ago, the industry toyed with Smell-evision which never worked out. Today, Disney invests millions in 3-D sensory theaters at their theme parks that spray audiences with mists of water when the character on screen sneezes and emit an odor into the room when the dog on screen farts. This is impressive and it’s what comes to mind most when we’re promised a viewing experience that goes beyond hearing and watching.
But, even the aliens-among-us images don’t begin to help us understand how the Kuro might enable us to touch and feel television. If that was possible, we’d love it! And it’d probably be just the shot in the arm that the weary after-hours porn on cable biz could use.
