Advertising Tropes/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The "I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC" commercials are stealth Windows commercials.

Like Satan in Paradise Lost, PC gets all the best lines. further supporting this, John Hodgman could kill Justin Long any day of the week.

  • Further supporting this is that fans of the commercials identify more with the nerdy PC and find Mac to be a Jerkass.
    • And many of the arguments Apple presents don't make sense or have implications the opposite of what Apple intended. One brought up Windows's instability and admitted that it's a natural side effect of there being so much PC software and hardware from so many different vendors--and emphasized at the same time that Macs don't have this problem. The Fridge Logic version of this claim: As a Mac user, you have far fewer choices than your PC-using peers because Apple is sure that restricting your options is the only thing standing between your Mac and frequent crashes.
    • Poll. Forewarning: kinda gay. Like, really gay.
  • And they've gone on double dates with the Vonage chick and the phone company guy, since "Vonage" has the same philosophy. The Vonage harridan's arguments may be slightly better (though not much), but she is more actively annoying, and so it cancels out.

Cablevision's Pixel commercials are stealth FIOS commercials.

Similar to the above Windows vs PC commercials, Cablevision's "Pixel" commercials are usually great advertisements for their primary rival, Verizon. They not only contain wild inaccuracies (thus disillusioning potential customers when they call for service) and are incredibly unfunny, but they also include subtle hints that FIOS is actually the vastly superior service, including one (The infamous "I'm glad I'm pink" commercial) where a disheveled pixel is sent to work for Cable because he wasn't good enough for FIOS. If these commercials don't make you a FIOS subscriber, you're not watching close enough.

Under his mask, the Burger King is a skull stripped of skin and much of his flesh.

He was inspired to become a burger maker when he survived being snowbound in a small town with no restaurant and no friends by eating his own face; he didn't want anyone to ever suffer the same fate.

  • So The King survived Silent Hill? No wonder he seems so weird.
  • There is no mask. One day, his head will part itself at the "jawline," and there will be nothing but teeth inside. Rows upon rows of jagged fangs jutting in every direction.
  • In Act 1 Scene 2d of the play "The King In Yellow", the Stranger, when asked by Camilla and Cassilda to unmask at the Grand Masquerade, states that he wears no mask.

The (Burger) King will receive a Yellow Lantern ring.

Think about it. How terrifying would it be if he just showed up in your room with a Whopper. Just when you thought you were safe? (FYI, Yellow Lantern rings are like green, but they operate off fear.)

The Aflac Duck has Tourettes syndrome.

Aflac is a insurance company for people with disabilities. The Duck can only say one word. He doesn't even quack.

The Detrol-LA commercial with the teacher was originally written as a (rejected) All That sketch.

The teacher has to pee and is desperately trying to make it to the bell without wetting herself, much to the amusement of her Middle School - aged students...

That Orangina ad (you know the one) was made by furries

Daaaaaaamn.

Four out of five Doctors prefer Trident.

The Fifth Doctor prefers celery.

Quote: "It's got to be good for my teeth."

The original Geico gecko was the current one's "phone" alter ego, as seen in AT&T commercials.

The gecko doesn't have AT&T, and so he has no service anywhere. As a result, he doesn't get all the calls that his alter ego was complaining about, and so he likes Geico just fine.

Billy Mays and Vince Offer are teaming up to take over the world.

Two commercial salsemen with no sense of volume and stupid products. Coincidence?

The Hulu alien adverts are real

It's just a case of extreme Refuge in Audacity. Because they exposed their own plan, nobody will believe that they are, in fact, aliens hoping to melt brains and destroy the world. There's no other reason for a site as addictive and time-consuming as Hulu to exist.

Quizno's wants to go out of business

Possibly the CEOs will get ludicrously rich off golden parachutes. Or maybe it's just a Springtime for Hitler scheme, only with genuinely good product. This explains the stomach-churning 'monkeys' ads and the recent 'Talking oven in S&M sex relationship with boy employee'.

Vince Offer is Kira.

He killed off Michael Jackson via heart attack with his Death Note to distract the public from the death of his rival, Billy Mays, whom he also killed off with his Death Note. This is all part of an elaborate scheme to make himself the God of Advertising.

This may be crazy but...

I think commercials are trying to get us to buy the stuff in the commercial.

  • What? You'll never get anyone to believe that!
    • Isn't it obvious? what better way for companies to advertise their products by showing them on a short TV skit and have someone talk about it? Some people might say it's just Product Placement but I'll show them! I'll show them all!
      • They spend a lot of money on focus groups and psychologists to figure out common human responses to various stimuli, then embed their commercials with appropriate stimuli for what they're trying to sell. For example, they want people to associate big cars with power and dominance, so they set up the ad to suggest the people driving it are powerful and dominant. In this way they circumvent your rational decision-making process, disenfranchising you from your human right to make your own choices free of coersion.
        • Packaged in with that are reasons for the consumer to feel worthless if he doesn't buy it. They get to modify culture through omnipresence - commercial ads are all around everyone constantly. But everyone is told that they are "strong and independent enough" to remain unaffected by them. Even the children watching cartoons!

The burger king, smilin' Bob and the chocolate guy from the axe ads are all the same person.

Think about it.

Trix Cereal is like crack cocaine for rabbits.

The rabbit in the commercials is a major junkie. The kids are trying to help him by keeping the stuff away from him.

  • I don't think Cocoa Puffs even needs any sort of explanation...
    • Don't be silly. It's Cocoa Puffs that are comparable to an illegal substance (Crystal Meth, to be exact), and the Trix Rabbit is just a tragic hero. That, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch is covered with crack cocaine.

The Burger King is Epic Fail Guy.

...Yeah.

The Kool-Aid Man is really a pedophile

Think about it. He busted down walls when parents were usually not around, after he stopped that he basically hosted huge parties full of Kool-aid (Whose to say some of those weren't spiked?), and now he's trying to improve his image by stalking kids with their parents to show their folks that he's better than soda.

Ad companies make their money by designing ads that fail.

OK, how many times have you seen a commercial and said, "I could make a better commercial than that." Corporations pay huge firms piles of money to make the worst ads. Why? Because when the ads fail to generate business, the company goes back to the advertiser, and they do it all over again! Ad companies run their proposals through the corporate representatives, so they can just say, "Hey, we gave you what you wanted, didn't we? Not our fault it didn't work."

  • According to a professor I had in an Advertising class you might not be far off from the truth.
  • They're probably not all designed to fail. Instead, they only put effort into a few of them. What better way to get more money off of a successful ad campaign then by having 4 o 5 more no-effort ad campaigns that you still get paid money for? Ad companies have just enough success that businesses can't afford not to pay for ads, while at the same time ad companies put in the bare minimum amount of work.

Commercials are a Xanatos Gambit used to lure us away from the truth

Which is, those products actually contained things you don't want to know.

Commercials are just a facade. The real advertising lies inside....

Subliminal Propaganda.

The companies actually believe what they put out as commercials

Several Saturday Night Live parody ads were mistaken for real products and enterprising companies quickly made said products real

  • I hope this one's true, because I'd love to try Big Fat Bean sometime. I mean, why eat a bunch of little ones when you can have a single big one?
  • I hope so too. I would pay inordinate sums of money for a floor wax/dessert topping.
  • Ass Don't Smell looks like a quality product as well.

The new Old Spice guy is watching you.

    • "Look at your television. Now look at the IR sensor. Look back at me, that's not a camera. Did you read 1984? I'm running this country backwards. Now I'm rich. Now you're rich. No you're not, because I'm in charge of everything. Old Spice."

The Old Spice Guy is a Timelord.

Yeah, you knew it was coming. The horse is his TARDIS. When he regenerated into Ray Lewis, he realized that bringing a horse into Baltimore is a bad idea. (He then goes back in time, to fill the plot hole. He's a Time Lord, after all. He's the Time Lord Your Time Lord Could Smell Like.)

The Trix Rabbit is trapped in an Ironic Hell.

In life, he stole Trix all the time. Now he can't get any. It's like Tantalus.

Flo is a fledgling deity of customer service.

She is chipper and perky 24/7 and always gets the sale; in other words she is the perfect sales rep. The strange, white place where she sells insurance is her personal domain over which she is lady and mistress, which is why you never see any other employees. With enough people worshiping her Genki Girl nature, she will eventually ascend to full-godhood, unless her rival Erin E-surance gets the better of her first.

Chester the Cheetah is actually a Satan figure.

He slowly but surely corrupts people by helping them get revenge via cheetos, starting with petty jokes to teach them that Evil Feels Good while most likely invoking Evil Tastes Good at the same time. The people in those commercials are making a Deal with the Devil by following Chester's advice, and all they have to do is put cheetos up some guys nose.

The kids in Trix commercials are being fined for animal cruelty, and the kids in the Lucky Charms commercials are facing harrassment charges.

"Hey, what are you doing later? Let's withhold food from that rabbit." "Nah, I can't. I'll be too busy stalking a leprechaun in order to steal his cereal."

The infamous Carhart jacket "wolf tooth" commercials will be taken to the inevitable conclusion...

Of protecting the wearers from zombie bites.

The kid from the Toyota Highlander commercials is getting paid under the table by the UAW.

Or the producer/director is. Or they're getting paid off by a rival auto maker.

Mikey doesn't really like it.

He Hates it, he hates everything.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon isn't just a baseball fan.

She grew up to drive a cab. A Boston cab. And she really likes Tim Thomas.