intro

Okay – I’ll be the first to admit it, I watch way too much television. I could give lots of excuses: I have two kids, (19 months and 1 month) and while I love playing with them, holding hands while my daughter jumps on the couch is a lot less boring when I can watch Project Runway also. Or how about: I absolutely love reading but it’s pretty hard when you are feeding one baby while simultaneously trying to chase the other around the dining room table. Another good one: I’d love to go to the park everyday but its cold and snowy out there (this one doesn’t work as well in July). But the honest truth is I am solidly addicted to the television. From 8am Buffy reruns to the 10 pm version of Law and Order, I pretty much have the idiot box on all day. Which means that I get a chance to see a lot of commercials, a lot of times. And I can’t help wondering why people get paid for some of this crap. I mean obviously most commercials are stupid are annoying or boring or just plain forgettable. And some are truly inspired and funny and I actually enjoy watching them over and over again. The current careerbuilder.com campaign where office workers are surviving in the jungle: brilliant. The ones I will probably comment most on are the ones that fall just shy of the mark – they have smart or clever premises, but their execution is lacking. Unfortunately it is all too indicative of most people’s current attitudes towards their work, and it is a shame that whoever created the initial idea wasn’t committed enough to see it through to completion accurately.

The prime example of this is a commercial that ran several years back for the Nissan Sentra (www.NissanUSA.com/Sentra). This ad featured two crash test dummies fighting over getting into the car with the tagline “everybody wants to drive it.” Clever, it caught your attention, there was only one glaring problem. The dummies were fighting over the passenger side door. Maybe the crash test dummies were British, maybe it was a sly allusion to the fact that they just can’t afford the premiums on their insurance anymore after the number of wrecks they typically get into so they had to be passengers. What it said to me was “no one wants to drive it.” Whoops – probably not the message intended. But I bet it was awesome in England.