My Super Bowl Ad for Bud Light

In watching the Super Bowl and the advertisers wet dream of eyes not only watching but actively interested in the ads being played I came up with my own ad that should be made.

It would be for Bud Light and plays off their series of ads where guys do stupid things to steal Bud Light because it is such incredibly delicious beer. There are a bunch of ads in the series from the aliens offering Bud Light to the men to help keep their species alive to the guys drilling through the wall and refrigerator of the apartment next door to steal the Bud Light in the fridge. And many, many more.

Toyota's Ad Campaign to Win Back Customers

The shocking erosion of consumer confidence in the previously untarnished and exemplary marque that was Toyota has resulted in a massive scramble for marketing campaigns designed to win back their nervous customers. And who can blame them really, the idea of a Prius run amok without brakes and a stuck accelerator scares most people (though some of the more rational among us are wondering why the driver didn't put the car in neutral and coast to a stop). Intellectual Poison's crack team of corporate ninjas was able to penetrate the security of Toyota America's HQ Public Relations War Room and steal these ad campaigns under consideration.

Buy a Toyota and Get a Free Coffin - truth be told, this one had already been crossed out in angry red marker.

Toyota Will Get You There Faster Whether You Like It or Not - the suits seemed to like this one as it had been circled in green marker, our data analysts put this campaign at a 5 to 2 favorite to go live.

Toyota: At Least We're Not Chrysler or GM - another strong potential winner if the chicken scratches along the side are any indication.

Toyota Remembers When You Loved Us, You Really, Really Loved Us - it appears that this was a late night entry into the pool, there are doodles on the mock ups as well lipstick kisses, some unidentifiable stains and one cigarette burn.

The next few concept campaigns were mostly brainstormed ideas on a white board, our team of trained monkeys analysts were unwilling to lay odds on any of these even when we offered them some extra bananas.

Betcha Didn't Know Prius' Could Go That Fast?
Even a Prius Without Brakes and a Stuck Accelerator is Better for the Planet Than a Road Hog from Detroit
Everybody Knows If You Die in a Toyota Then You Go Straight to Heaven
(the converse ad) Everybody Knows If You Die in a Honda Then You Burn in the Deepest Pits of Hell Forever!
Buy a Toyota and Inject Some Mayhem Into Your Commute!
Toyota's New Model: The Kamikaze!
Buy A Toyota or Our Senior Executives Will Have to Commit Ritual Suicide
Data Not Wrong, Stupid Round Eye Americans Are Wrong, Buy a Damned Toyota Stupid American
Penis So Small, So, So Small, Toyota Make Good, Good Car
At Least a Toyota Isn't Tainted with Lead (this one was scratched out with an all caps DAMN IT! next to it, note to self, stop eating the paint chips off neighbor's Toyota)
Toyota's Don't Kill People, Our Ninjas Kill People...That Aren't Driving Toyotas
WhyIoughta Buy a Toyota (apparently an attempt at rhyming)

The rest of the board was illegible scribbles with lots of exclamation points, drawings of breasts with googly eyed men ogling them, penises and rocket ships.

We at Intellectual Poison wish Toyota well as they struggle through this swamp of bad publicity following some bad decision making and bad designs. If Toyota would like to, they are more than welcome to deliver a brand new Forerunner to the Intellectual Poison offices for, uhhh, evaluation purposes. We prefer classic black ones if at all possible.

Ads I'm Completely Sick Of

Herein, for your review, are advertisements on the television that I'm thoroughly and completely sick of. Ad campaigns, spots, whatever, I feel bitching about stuff.

Geico - I hate the cavemen, I hate the concept, I hate the never-endingness of these incredibly stupid ads. But I also hate their goddamned gecko almost as much.

1 800 Dentist - I hate these awful ads so much that I've had daydreams about kicking Fred Joyal in the balls. The ads are terrible, annoying, nagging and ineffective.

Subway's Five Dollar Foot Longs - they have, thankfully receded in prominence, but these ads were thinly veiled homages to huge cocks and drove me, as a man possessing a regular non-pornstar sized cock, to madness and to scramble to change the fucking channels when these stupid ads came on. The ads have, unfortunately, been replaced with Jared again, the ugliest spokesdork ever. Actually, I just hate Subway.

Six Flags' Creepy Old Dancing Man - I thought they'd gotten the clue from the entire universe, the fake old dancing guy is really creepy and makes me want to keep my kids as far away from him and his park as possible. It was a bad idea that they don't seem to be able to get away from.

Microsoft's Laptop Ads - What do I take from Microsoft's latest stupid ad campaign? People are idiots if they want the most enormous laptop they can get. They slag Macs because they are smaller and cost more, there's a reason, Macs hold their value alot longer and run better throughout their lifespans. You buy a Dell laptop for $700 and you can almost be guaranteed to have to replace it in two years. I've got a Mac Pismo powerbook in my office that's at least 8 years old and still works perfectly (yes, it is slow by today's standards but that isn't its fault).

Carl's Jr. Bikini Burger - Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of hot chicks in bikinis. But hearing this vapid moron talking about how hard it is to look as good as she does while stuffing her face with a burger that has enough fat and calories for two full days is beyond idiotic. Plus, she may be hot but she comes across about as shallow as a bird bath.

And now, to balance out the vitriol I feel for shitty, unfunny ads, how about a few ads that I don't hate and don't immediately change the channel when they come on?

Jack in the Box - with the exception of the dancing ones, Jack's ads are consistently funnier than any other fast food place.

Okay, I can't think of any other ads that I like right now. But I reserve the right to add to this post if I come up with any.

What ads drive you to madness?

One More Day...

Until the end of the awful Christmas ads.

I'm trying not to get all bah-humbuggy but it is all but impossible sometimes. The bombardment to spend, spend, spend to prove, prove, prove your love for your family and friends is incessant and wears you down. Not unlike a trip to Las Vegas where you don't gamble at all the first day but slowly, slowly they get their hooks into you and, before you know it, you're blowing twenty bucks a hand on blackjack and down a thousand bucks.

One more day and then the world starts to return to whatever passes for normal. Actually more like 36 hours since today has just begun.

I wish I could find even a speck of holiday spirit but I'm so thoroughly beat down and tired of the whole stupid ass charade that I am just in a holding pattern until the storm passes.

Let's face it, Christmas for adults sucks. Not that it shouldn't but there's so much run up, so much hyping and then the actual day is, without fail, a depressing letdown.

On a mildly positive note, I did, eventually, get some cards printed up to send out. I guess they're called holiday cards since there's no chance they go out before Christmas. Not that it matters really, does it?

Anyway, without getting into too much of it, I'm having a crappy holiday break. I think I need to get away for a day or two and see if I can regain a little perspective.

Window and Tab Spawning Sites

Why do sites feel compelled to spawn a new tab or window for every link you click on? Its a pain in the ass to have to keep shutting down previous tabs when they do this. Is this some way to game advertising or do they do it because they are just so very, very proud of their homepages that they want to keep them loaded up on your browser forever and ever.

This spawning problem is less annoying then the sites that hijack browsers altogether and then see fit to make them as large as possible, difficult to close and overload processors with garbage media embedded in the page. Actually, those sites are waaaay more annoying.

But window and tab spawning is stupid too.

I guess I'm on a stupid and pointless kick these days.

[Update: To clarify my point of annoyance! Sites that open a new window with each click annoy me. Either a new window or a tab. What this means is that, if you go four pages deep into the site, you've got five windows or new tabs. Unlike most sites where the clicked link opens up in the same window or you can right click and choose to open one in a new tab or window.]

Pop Under Ads? Puhlease!

Apparently some websites haven't gotten the memo that pop under advertisements do not work and are just an annoyance to surfers. Pop ups are worthless too but are slightly less annoying since you actually see them and can just close them.

But both pop ups and pop unders are just stupid wastes of money. Yes, I'm looking at your Classmates.com.

I was under the understanding that FireFox was supposed to block these stupid and pointless ads and yet they seem to keep popping under my browser window.

Its time for some new ad models, preferably ones that don't rely on hiding themselves and being annoying but I'm not holding my breath.

Gear Grinder

You know what grinds my gears?

Long and unskippable ads on DVD's for kids. Like the Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. There are long ads for the other DVDs in the series and then another ad for the book series. You can not skip them, you can only fast forward through them.

That sort of abrasive marketing should be stopped entirely. It makes me want to never buy another thing from the Thomas line (yes, I realize that that statement is utterly insane and likely impossible with two boys under the age of four).

Marketing to kids is always going to be a touchy subject and it should be approached cautiously and with consideration.

Forcing kids (and their parents) to sit through ads for the product you're about to watch is just plain rude.

And that isn't even touching on the pervasive Work is Good is Fun theme. Maybe another time on that.

Bad Advertisers Will Always Miss The Point

TechDirt has a posting about TrimSpa's latest "Tivo-Proof" ads that highlights a problem with advertising in general. If you need to force eyeballs to look at your ad then you've already failed as an advertiser.

The attempt to force people to look at your ad is self-defeating. If you force me to look at your ad, I will, but only so I can memorize your brand so as to NEVER BUY YOUR PRODUCT. Using force or highly manipulative techniques to get my eyes on your schlock is 100% guaranteed to fail to win me as a customer.

You will not force me into buying your product, the real end goal of your advertising. You can trick me into watching your ad with humor, shock or really hot chicks. But trick me in other ways, such as the pizza ad during Survivor that looked like the lead-in back into the show so I stopped fast-forwarding on Tivo, that ad "worked" but still failed as I won't be buying their pizza, ever. And yes, I know who's pizza it was, I'm just not giving them any more attention that they don't deserve.

Just like GoDaddy, a company run by assholes, uses shock and pornstars for its ads. They have to because their company has a piss poor reputation and has, without any verification, shut down sites registered with them based on a single, anonymous complaint.

Also, TrimSpa's the company that hired Anna Nicole Smith to be their spokesmodel, that should tell you tons about their target demographic and marketing tactics.

Coulter Loses Advertising

Just a short note to a longer post on IP Politik about Ann Coulter losing advertisers on her site because of her most recent hate-speech about John Edwards' sexuality.

It won't change her in anyway but that's alright. It feels good to know that others in the world find her as thoroughly reprehensible as I do.