Deep thought

Greedily is the ugliest word in the English language.

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Signs

I am surely not the only person who's driven through town on southbound I-85 in recent days whos asked, "what the hell is that supposed to be selling?"


Ordinarily, i wouldn't bother to call attention to this. I mean, we're surrounded by bad advertising and ugly graphic design. It's as much a part of the landscape as cell phone towers, and most of the time we can just filter it out with our thoroughly modern brains.

But as it happens, i know what this ad is selling. And that's where it gets ironic. See, the Addy's are the Triangle Ad Club's annual award for best marketing and advertising work done in the region. And this year's theme is, apparently, "The Evolution of Advertising."

From the website:

That's the theme for the 2008 RDU Addys, sponsored by American Advertising Foundation, AAF Raleigh-Durham. It's an historical, occasionally hysterical overview of the good and bad (ok, all bad) advertising of previous decades. Of course, the real purpose is to celebrate the brilliance of today's advertising and marketing professionals in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

I'm sure that the actual honorees will be awesome. But let's remember that advertising, like science fiction, is and always has been subject to Sturgeon's Law, and that its suckitude is in no way related to the decade in which it was produced. Meanwhile, i'm hoping that, with the awards dinner to be held on the 29th, this embarrassment will be down by March 1.

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The stupidest beer commercial ever

Anheuser-Busch has long since shown that good marketing trumps good beer when it comes to selling lots and lots of malt beverage. And to be fair, Budweiser's been on a commercial roll for well over a decade, going back to the "Yes, I Am" campaign, even though their beer is still not worth drinking.

Heineken has already got the sucky beer part down, but now they're screwing up the other half of the equation with the stupidest beer commercial ever. This one's called "Have it like that." It features interspersed shots of a Heineken Light bottle and a new slimline Heineken Light can, set to some bad hip-hop. The guy, whose voice comes on when the bottle is shown, repeats the phrase "Can i have it like that?" and the i guess it's supposed to be sexy female voice comes on when the can is shown, and she says "You got it like that."

OK, that's just typical Mad. Ave. dumb, and not worth commenting on.

The kicker, and what elevates this commercial into the truly rarefied atmosphere of alltime stupidity is when the man's voice changes gear, while the can is shown from different angles, and he's saying "So drop your purse and grab your hips, and act like you're trying to get this money right quick."

Because comparing your product to a crack whore is the best way to create strong brand identity.

UPDATE: NO, i haven't forgotten about Anheuser-Busch's "Rape Me" billboard from last November. If that billboard was ever a TV commercial, then it didn't show on any programs i watch. And while offensive, that ad wasn't particularly stupid.

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