Burgers + Camera Tricks + Little People = Head Scratch

So I see this commercial for Burger King the other day. First, I have to say that I'm really, REALLY glad that "The King" isn't the exclusive campaign for BK. That guy is super creepy. Creepy, like he's actually from an alternate dimension where giant plastic heads are the "in" thing like boob jobs and piercings are here.

So this ad has a bunch of construction workers building burgers. Of course the best way to build burgers, according BK, is to hire really small people with tiny construction equipment. But I'm not going to get into the economics of miniaturization in today's post.

Can someone explain to me, if you're using photographic or digital effects to shrink the actors and equipment down in size, why did they need to hire little people to play the roles of the construction workers? I mean, I've got to believe that the daily rate for little people actors is a bit higher than your average "waiter turned daytime soap star" actor right? What am I missing?

Is there some written or implied rule of the actors guild that states that for all roles implying full time smallness (e.g. not Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) that little people must be used? Or is there some deeper, more sinister reason behind this seemingly ridiculous casting?

While not as creepy as "The King," its still just as puzzling. But, at least it's not the urban, hip-hop, eat our food cause it tastes good and you'll be "ho'in fo Mickey D ya wizzle" crap that McDonalds churns out. Man those commericals blow.

Please, Please Let Me Punch the Mac

These Mac/PC commercials have gone to far....or maybe not far enough. I'm SOOOOOO tired of that tool Mac being all, "I'm younger and cooler than you are". Let's take the one where they're talking about spyware and viruses. "I don't have to worry about spyware, I run OS/X." What he should have said is "I don't have to worry about spyware, no one cares about disrupting the lives of K-12 students." The reality is that there is no spyware on the Mac because no one cares what Mac users are doing.

So Apple is trying to tell us that OS/X is impervious to malicious attack. Interesting. I wonder how much I'd have to pay to get some loser to hack-me-up some sweet OS/X virus. Something cool that would, oh I don't know, screw with their dock, change their color depth and deprive them of smoothly animated icons. Yeah, that'll get 'em. Naw, no money in that. But an iPod virus. Now that'll piss off a bunch of tools.

What I want to see are the missing commercials. Like the one where PC and Mac are at a party. And PC is surrounded by all these beautiful women, models, doctors, lawyers....and then there is Mac surrounded by a couple of semi-goths who are still in art school.

PC: "Look at all this great software. What more could a computer ask for?"

Mac: "Yeah, that's nice but I'm happy with my boutique library of programs. Like iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. Oh yeah, and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing."

Voice over: "Mac, it's what you want if you're rebellious, artsy, and poor!"

[long pause]

"Or if you think you're cool."

Another long lost Apple Ad

"Click It or Stick a Guard Rail In Your Skull"

Why do governments feel the need to protect citizens from their own stupidity? Take this article for instance. I don't even have to read beyond the sub-title. People who don't wear their seat belts should get everything they deserve, free steel head-gear and all. $31 million to monitor if gifted red-neck pickup drivers are wearing their seat belts on the back roads of Tennessee.

Other than the obvious insurance and health-care impacts of keeping seriously injured but, unfortunately, not mortally wounded seat-belt free accident victims alive, what possible benefit do programs such as "Click It or Ticket" have? However, even that impact will be short-lived as most people that are dead or in a vegetative state are unable to reproduce. To wear or not wear a seat belt? Here's a great personal liberty that the government shouldn't be getting involved in. If someone finds seat belts bothersome and uncomfortable, then please, please let them drive without them. They aren't putting anyone but themselves in danger. Other than the on-scene clean up crew, I don't think anyone but the seat-belt free idiot loses.

People wonder why the world isn't advancing fast enough. Why do we still have people that are poor, hungry, and homeless? Because we continually thwart the basic principles of nature: such as survival of the fittest. Instead of attempting to solve the right problems, we tackle the easy ones. We create ridiculous laws, and then have special programs to create awareness and "enforce" compliance.

Uncle Jimbo has a few ideas regarding more appropriate programs for our tax dollars. Let's focus on creating awareness and enforcement programs like these:

Crack It and Whack It: This one is very basic. Find the mothers giving birth to crack-addicted babies, and whack the $hit out of them. Making sure in the process that she fully understands she can either have the drugs, or the baby, but not both. the name of the program can be adjusted to meet the needs of other types of drugs.

Code It or Explode It: Find and destroy all the software development houses that create crappy software. Nothing is holding back technology more than a bunch of useless hacks creating uninspired, unusable, productivity killing software. If this was a federal program, Microsoft would have been repeatedly fire-bombed and the two most heinous software words in my daily life might not be relevant anymore: Lotus Notes.

Act or STFU: This is a California specific program that rounds up celebrities, in the wild, attempting to make statements in the areas of politics, religion, or any other meaningful area of interest. NO ONE WITH AN IQ OVER 110 CARES WHAT YOU THINK. STFU. Officers will be equipped with a trunk full of second hand socks to handle the completely unruly crowd like Best Grip Mike and Tommy Mapother.

Hang It or Bang It: My personal favorite. Laws would be created that would provide the common man (or woman) the ability to stop a moving vehicle whose driver is on a cell phone, extract them from the vehicle, and violate their person in any way that seems appropriate, ideally with the cell phone in question. Phonebang 'em til it hurts. Just make sure it's not set to vibrate, some of them might like it.

If you see a violation of the laws of nature, an act of a government or private organization providing stupid people the opportunity to escape the grasp of natural selection, please report it. It's the only way the rest of us aren't going to be bred out of existence.

Risk Free Offer (sic)

So I'm plowing through the reams of junk mail we get every day; catalogs, credit card offers, and other useless marketing materials that only make me not want to use the sending companies products and services. When, all of a sudden I find something out of the ordinary. It's a small relatively plain card with information regarding a free offer.

Simply apply the included sticker and receive a Risk Free Trial. Generally I'm all over free stuff. But it was the Risk Free part of the statement that made me stop and ponder. The offer was for a complimentary issue of Playboy.

Free yes, risk free for the average married man....no way. "Look honey, my free issue of Playboy just showed up. I love the articles." Playboy should really have better demographics for their lists and should have different messages for married versus single men. What I got would be fine for single guys, but the married card should have said something like "Get a free copy and we'll send it in an opaque plastic bag to your alternate address of choice."

But even that isn't risk free. Maybe Playboy should just go with "FREE". Nakedness and risk generally go hand-in-hand....so to speak.

Ad Campaigns Are Like Presidents

They're either effective or they're not. Generally, bad ads will not just cause me to not buy a product or service, but if they're really bad they'll drive me away from the product entirely. Take Snickers. I like Snickers, but I won't eat them right now because of their horrible ad campaign. What idiot executive looked at the storyboards for these ads and thought, "Yeah, that's a great concept." More than likely the thought was something like this, "Man, I don't understand this at all. It must be good. Hey, I wonder if my assistant remembered to put her bra back on." Do we have a bunch of ex-Fox executives working at M&M/Mars now? Let's see, we'll have people do things with Snickers that they're not intended for like throw at a deer or toss on a fire, and in doing so inform people that they're really tasty and they should buy some. I HATE THESE ADS!

Take the deer hunting one. If they really wanted red-neck deer hunters to buy Snickers wouldn't they have shot the same ad but instead of the deer running away when attacked, they could have had the Snickers bars turn into deadly sharp weapons that slice through the deer, killing it on the spot, automatically gutting and dressing it. Snickers, tasty in the tree stand and deadly quiet from 30 yards. Red-necks would be buying Snickers by the case.

Then there's the one were the um....questionably straight...guy who sees a fire, breaks the glass, grabs a Snickers and throws it on the fire only to have no effect. If you really wanted to sell to questionably straight men, wouldn't you have had the Snickers hit the fire and magically turn into a muscular, shirt-less fireman who douses the fire with urine and gives the guy a sly wink. No doubt that would sell to the questionable straight audience. As it is, the ads make fun of those demographics it portrays and pisses off the rest of us because of their stupidity. Nice job. These are Bush league ads. Too much attempted cleverness, not enough action.

Then we have the Reagan league ads, even if I didn't want it, I'd buy it because of the message. In this category we have the new Milwaukee's Best Light ads. Yep, the "Men Should Act Like Men" ads. I haven't laughed this hard at a series of ads in quite a while. Well done Milwaukee.

Annoying Tread #17

Wow, it's surprising how many of the things that annoy me fall into one (or more) of these (unranked) categories:

• Advertising/Marketing
• Entertainers
• Michael Moore (he's large enough to warrant his own category)
• Bad Drivers
• Bad Food
• Smokers
• Blondes
• Bad photographers (focus and framing really do matter)
• Mint flavoring
• Radio morning shows
• People who believe that have some status in life which automatically demands respect/attention
• The Oxygen network
• Work
• Sore losers
• People who can't perform their jobs at an average level
• All people who work in food service
• Good TV shows that "jump the shark"
• Nascar
• Bad Tequila (e.g. As the Colonel says, "anything with the word 'Jose' in the name isn't good tequila.")
• Anything labeled as 'cute'
• Cell phones
• Baggy pants with visible underwear
• The Three Stooges
• The French
• "Irregardless"
• Artificial flavors
• Country music
• Rap music
• People who make lists about crap that annoys them
• software that doesn't easily allow the entry of umlots

All of these, of course, fall into the über-category of Stupidity.

So here's beef #17. Automated telemarketing. Can someone please tell me when this started. The idea that I could avoid talking to another telemarketing person is a nice idea, but not being able to figure out what they're selling or how to actually order it is annoying (and somewhat comical). Not that I'd really buy anything over the phone, but I want ability to say "No." Whether it's to a live person or a machine. I get a call the other day pitching satellite TV. So I listen to the recorded babble and then want more information. But I don't get any instructions. So I push 0. Then 1. It starts ringing. Then I get put on hold. I push more numbers. It starts ringing again. After about 3 minutes (yes I had nothing better to do), a live person answers the phone. I say hello. Pause. I hear them breathing. "Hello?" And then the male voice responded with "Hello? hello, hello......hello, hello, hello, hello........hello, hello, hello, hello....." Until, realizing that his attempt to annoy me isn't working, he hangs up. Oh, you can't out-annoy me you sausage-guzzling phone jockey. I've got mad skills.

Um...Really: Marketing

Welcome to my first installment of Um....Really, dedicated to Patrick, a friend who always gets a kick out of me saying, "Um...Really," before I launch into one of my diatribes.

This installment is all about marketing; more specifically bad marketing and bad products. Let's take a look at today's lesson (Thanks Lance). Go ahead, finish laughing. Let's put the silliness of the product aside for a minute, and let's step into the shoes of the marketing person who got "stuck" with this product. Once you get past the initial shock and awe of being told what the company is going to do with a tried and tested product and that you are going to have to develop the campaign for it, your first thought, "What's my market?" I can't think of too many.

Your second thought? How are we going to name this thing? I mean, we've got to get Mint in the title right, so when we come out with different flavors we're good to go. [Editor: The remaining discussion regarding the name has been removed. I'm just not comfortable talking about condoms that can make you tingle by themselves.]

So now we've got to develop the packaging. Let's use an actual picture of a mint leaf. There's no chance any botanically-challenged customers might mistake it for poison ivy. And then comes....ah, the ad. Please explain to me Mr. Trojan Marketing Man, how does a "Bright, Vivid Color" enhance the experience? Electronically tested? What, does this condom also play MP3s? Let's go with the old fashioned mechanical testing please. Give it a stretch, if it doesn't break we'll call it a day.

I haven't laughed this hard over a product in quite a while. But it's still only #4 on the list of Disastrous Projects for Marketing Professionals. Topping that list is none other than the wonderfully nauseating Potted Meat Food Product. Found in your local supermarket, sitting on the shelf next to Spam and other marginally edible meat by-products this special little number can make most people run for a refreshing glass of water after seeing the can.

To truly appreciate the dilemma facing our trusty Armour or Hormel junior marketing executive we only need to turn the can and read the ingredients:

"INGREDIENTS: Chicken, Beef Tripe, Partially Defatted Cooked Pork Fatty Tissue, Beef Hearts, Partially Defatted Cooked Beef Fatty Tissue, Water, Salt", etc.

If you couldn't get past the third ingredient you are not alone. You know these marketing guys scoured the FDA regulations to determine what language they could and couldn't use. No one in their right mind would put the word "tissue" on a food product unless a law forced them. "Food Product," that's the other good one. What is it about this stuff that requires them to call it a Food Product. Not "Potted Meat." Not "Potted Meat Food." It's got to be labeled a Food Product. My guess is a certain percentage of cartilage. But I'm no expert.

My only recommendation, despite the best efforts of their respective marketing professionals, try to avoid these two products. And please, please, don't even think about using them together.

Regardless of the product, spread the word.