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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Three rabbits are on a log. One of them goes home and hangs himself. *[[Beat]]* Buy a bike!"''
|'''[[Lewis Black]]'''}}
When it comes to a [[Mind Screw]], the justification of [[True Art]] comes to mind.
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Compare [[Gainax Ending]], [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?]], [[What Were They Selling Again?]]. Contrast [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]], or at least the [[Trope Namer|trope-naming]] Ronseal adverts.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Literature ==▼
== Advertising ==
* Interestingly, [[Crazy Awesome|Hugo Ball]]'s 1916 ''Dada Manifesto'' inverts the principle, using what sounds like a conventional advertising slogan for an actual brand of soap ("Hobby horse", or "Dada" in French) in a text that is [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|meant to be utterly nonsensical]]:▼
{{quote|Dada is the world's soul▼
Dada is the whole point▼
Dada is the best lily milk soap in the world! }}▼
* In [[Gintama]], what started off as four minutes of talking mannequins suddenly became a PSA for the switch from analog to digital television.▼
== [[Live Action TV]] ==▼
* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' loved to parody this (at least in [[The Eighties]]). One ad had two people standing around making small talk for 30 seconds, and then the name of a defense industry company appears.▼
* ''[[The Apprentice (TV series)|The Apprentice]]'' usually features a task where the teams create a television advertisement for a certain product. [[Reality Show Genre Blindness|Almost invariably]], the first team's ad will be a heavy-handed and unrealistic scenario, while the second team follows this trope to the letter. The first team will usually win, as perhaps best illustrated by the task in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iq2EcDgqXg Series 4 in the UK]. (The ads begin at 0:30 and 2:48, and Alan Sugar voices his opinion on Dada Ads at 4:13)▼
** There was one time when ''both'' teams (tasked with advertising a body wash) came out with something like this. One depicted a runner splashing the soap ''on his face, without rinsing it off,'' and the other was entirely themed around gay sex innuendo, which doesn't fly on mainstream US advertising. Needless to say, ''neither'' team won this round.▼
** Alan Sugar once described this trope as one of his pet hates on ''Room 101'' so it's not surprising he would rule against ads using it.▼
** Although some of those ads were horrible anyway, like the already infamous Pantsman advert from the most recent series. An attempt to sell a cereal called Wake Up Call by advertising it as what you need to stop you [[What an Idiot!|putting your pants on over your clothes]]. And the mascot was Pantsman, a superhero who wears his pants over his clothes. The team [[Hand Wave|Handwaved]] the [[Fridge Logic]] of this by saying only Pantsman can wear his pants over his trousers, [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|never mind that most kids view superheroes as role models and want to do what they do]]. Unsurprisingly, they lost and Philip, the creator of Pantsman, will most likely [[Never Live It Down]]. Because [[Who Would Be Stupid Enough...?]] to design an advertising campaign based on pants?▼
*** [[Did Not Do the Research|Creator]] of Pantsman? [[VG Cats|Scott Ramsoomair]] has a lawsuit on his hands then.▼
* ''[[The Gruen Transfer]]'' has two regular segments that deals with this type of ad: "What Does It Mean?", in which they often contact the original ad agency to explain what was going on, and "What Is It For?" in which the product shot is cut off the end, and the panelists have to guess which product is being advertised.▼
* A ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'' episode featured an eccentric businessman played by [[Steve Martin]], who owned a company called SunStream. Eventually, it's revealed that he's a fraud and SunStream is a sham company. He points out that "If you ever watched our commercials, we never said what we did" and then the show [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlymNLAAzUM cuts to one such ad].▼
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==▼
* Mocked at least once in ''[[Dilbert]]'' with the Amorphous Ad Company.▼
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* [[Apple]] ran [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8 one of the most infamous Dada ads of all time] in 1984, featuring a rather heavy-handed Orwellian caricature of their competitors (or something).
** It seems the ad was made just for the pun at the end. "1984 won't be like ''[[
*** Not at all. While the ad was Dada, the message wasn't: you don't have to be a government to own a computer.
* [[Perfume Commercial
** This trope has come full circle now; a savvy viewer can ''always'' tell a perfume commercial because ''it has nothing to do with perfume'', or anything else, for that matter.
* The [[Dreamcast]] adverts are fairly notorious for having nothing to do with anything - all they feature is people with spiral hair, you don't even get to see the console itself. Somewhat of a bitter 'if only' with Dreamcast fans.
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*** Which is MUCH better than the newer commercial, where people drink Sprite, running into each other, and ''[[Nightmare Fuel|exploding.]]''
*** Heck, the initial commercial using the exploding water concept was even worse: It had a guy doing a backflip on an asphalt basketball court and preparing to ''land on his back'', exploding into liquid only upon contact with the ground!
*** Most recently{{when}} in line with the people exploding into Sprite, rapper
* [[David Lynch]] directed a couple of commercials. They are [[The Walrus Was Paul|just]] [[Nightmare Fuel|as]] [[Mind Screw|bizarre]] as you might expect from the man.
** Heck, just take a look at his [[PlayStation 2]] commercials.
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** One late-night TV host (it might have been Carson or Leno) commenting that sales of the car were still flat, but sales of rocks and trees were way up after that commercial.
* A ''[[Frontline]]'' examination of advertising today states that all this got started by an Acura commercial, which was a shot of a thunderstorm in the distant Savannah.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWWtgqDG2M This Dunlop ad]-- 'cause nothing says 'tires' like the [[Velvet Underground]] and fat guys in nipple clamps.
* British chocolate company Cadbury has lately{{when}} [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_YNzCMyr1M released] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkwFmgLhCkY some] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy52yueBX_s very] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVblWq3tDwY trippy] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGYMMsPg_ME ads].
** The ad with [[Uncanny Valley|two children twitching their brows]] was ''very'' badly received in Hong Kong: the importer of Cadbury had to take it down.
** ''[[The Now Show]] Book of Records'' awards them the prize of most baffling adverts ever. "What any of that has to do with a bar of chocolate, God alone only knows."
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** The McDonald's ad is actually interesting; the golden arches are supposed to represent breasts and thus make us hungry. That it resembles the first letter in "mother" is less coincidental than the fact that it resembles the first letter in the corporation's name. [[Freud Was Right]], after all.
** While we're on the subject, a Japanese McDonald's ad featured a girl having a [[Mirror Match]] with herself. The commercial alternates between a video game style and real life where the two girls just smash their heads together.
* A Toohey's ad which appeared to be featuring the Man With Silly Hair growing beer in these giant cocoon-like plants. '''
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tML1z720C4&feature=related Just] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHrF_4sgyw8&feature=related about] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6uJlI-t14&feature=related every] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esrNyIg_SMI&feature=related Australian] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvIwsLty9Fo beer] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvIwsLty9Fo ad] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTqwZG_4Gs&feature=related counts].
* There was a commercial for Mini cooper cars where the car drives into a parking lot and was attacked by living shopping trolleys.
* In Australia, there was a few ads that were made '''''intentionally''''' boring by showing one scene of someone smoking. The scene was actually probably less than a minute long but seemed like 3 minutes. In the end, we got the text "Smoking is very interesting". This is unusual for Australian PSAs because most of our PSAs tend to be a tad more [[Scare'Em Straight|direct]].
* Vodafone has a new add touting its new smartphone, it features people with fuzzy masks at a wedding for no clear reason. Whenever it comes up, people who see it wonder what it's trying to sell.
* [[Michael Jackson]]'s 1995 double album ''HIStory'', which featured one disc of greatest hits and another of new material, had a nearly four-minute long trailer made that ran in movie theaters. The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c93o05SrWzE trailer] turned out to be a short film in which masses of people welcome Jackson into a city as, apparently, a benevolent ruler and unveil a colossal statue of him. At no point is the actual product shown, described, or heard from, as its makers chose to use music from ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'' instead. As Sean Weitner commented in a Flak Magazine [https://web.archive.org/web/20030304005841/http://www.flakmag.com/music/mj/videos2.html article], "[I]t's a video ''without original Jackson music''" (emphasis his).
* A certain Australian Toyota ad does this. Though we are told what the ad was for (a new sports car), that does not justify the anthropomorphic ninja cats kung-fu fighting against each other. [[Rule of Cool|Then again, maybe it doesn't need to be justified.]]
** [http://www.motorward.com/2011/09/video-toyota-prius-family-ad-is-creepy/ This ad], however, needs some justification for why Toyota believes an expedition to the deepest point in the [[Uncanny Valley]] will help them sell a car. And before that, they had an ad proclaiming that their new car [[Captain Obvious|is a car]], and a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E15PE7iGT0U Corolla campaign] inexplicably partnered with [[Vocaloid|Hatsune Miku]]. Maybe they just want people to forget about the "help the accelerator pedal has fallen and it can't get up" fiasco?
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JYimOK6AY Is this]... an ad for ''tires?!'' Why is ''[[Astro Boy (anime)|Astro Boy]]'' [[Mind Screw|there?!]]
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* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olLp8Cssh_M Don't Say no to the Panda]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo Honda] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrQoof1F2cQ adverts]... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W-O7jnoSWo just] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K4QlJky-sw Honda] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxZNbbxvML8 adverts].
** Surprisingly, a ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20120530054653/http://www.pogomix.net/interest-from-honda/ Pogo song]'' is apparently where they draw the weirdness line.
** Hey, that Rube Goldberg machine was [[Doing It for the Art|real]]!
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s-aXtrrdpU This
* At the time of writing, there are some TV ads trying to promote travel to [[Canada]]. The problem is that most of them have no dialogue, and none of them tell the viewer anything about Canada.
* A man gets on a train and bleats like a sheep. As anyone would do in such a bizarre situation, the rest of the passengers start laughing in a way that makes the room in ''[[Evil Dead|The Evil Dead 2]]'' look like [[Ben Stein]]. A girl walks into the train at starts clucking, then a man barks. Clearly, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnJSdvvnMs racism is wrong.]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF6PyIML0hI This commercial] is filled [[Ridiculously Cute Critter|with extremely cute]] little bunnies [[Tastes Like Diabetes|doing extremely cute things]] [[Sugar Bowl|at an old-style fair while soothing music plays]]. As we see a pair of them rising up in a hot air balloon, a neon sign comes swings down from the sky and hits their balloon. It reads "SWEET MILLION IS SWEETER THAN SWEET", and then another which says, [[Department of Redundancy Department|"WHICH IS SWEET"]] crashes into the first one. Yes, this sickeningly sweet commercial was made to sell ''[[Lottery Ticket
* There was an old ad for the Gameboy Pocket. It was nothing short of this and had little to do with the actual product. It was shown a few times, but never actually played with or anything. Instead, for a good 30 seconds, we are treated to [[Department of Redundancy Department|small miniature]] people doing weird stunts and stuff in or on ordinary household items, included a bunch of hipsters [[Mind Screw|swimming in a jar of alcohol swabs]]. Not until the end do we actually hear the name of the product as "NEW GAME BOY POCKET". The mixed song in the background also includes samples from [[Department of Redundancy Department|the very ad itself]].
* Boxman, a short-lived early British online music and video retailer, failed largely because its adverts, showing a suited man with a cardboard box over his head dropped into random scenes, completely failed to explain what it was.▼
* The early TV adverts for Eurostar trains through the Channel Tunnel failed to explain the nature of the business coherently, leading to people turning up at the terminal in central London expecting to drive their cars onto the train.
* Barclays Bank adverts, which illustrate savings accounts through coin gardens and piles of singing banknotes, and mortgages through herding piggybanks or operating a railway handcar. The humorous voiceover often seems as bemused as the audience ("Is the squirrel relevant?")
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* Mayflower Moving will help anyone with their moving needs. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq6E8qktccg Even if you are a 20-foot tall puppet.]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dueBkmLlM This] advertisement for Netflix has a beaver explain to you just how awesome Netflix is. But don't take his word for it, since fish are ''far'' more trustworthy.
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has articles about [http://www.cracked.com/article_17574_7-insane-ads-that-have-no-clue-what-theyre-selling.html 7 such ads] and [http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-obnoxious-ads-that-donE28099t-even-try-to-sell-their-products/ 6 more].▼
==
▲* In ''[[Gintama]]'', what started off as four minutes of talking mannequins suddenly became a PSA for the switch from analog to digital television.
* [[Ron White]] uses this trope in one of his comedy routines. He says perfume ads have become too complex for simple men like himself. Then he describes an over-the-top Dada Ad which ends with a man on fire and sensual woman saying, "I would know him in the dark." The punchline is, "What's the trick? He's ON FIRE!"▼
▲== Literature ==
▲* Interestingly, [[Crazy Awesome|Hugo Ball]]'s 1916 ''Dada Manifesto'' inverts the principle, using what sounds like a conventional advertising slogan for an actual brand of soap ("Hobby horse", or "Dada" in French) in a text that is [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|meant to be utterly nonsensical]]:
▲{{quote|Dada is the world's soul
▲Dada is the whole point
▲Dada is the best lily milk soap in the world! }}
▲* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' loved to parody this (at least in [[The Eighties]]). One ad had two people standing around making small talk for 30 seconds, and then the name of a defense industry company appears.
▲* ''[[The Apprentice (TV series)|The Apprentice]]'' usually features a task where the teams create a television advertisement for a certain product. [[Reality Show Genre Blindness|Almost invariably]], the first team's ad will be a heavy-handed and unrealistic scenario, while the second team follows this trope to the letter. The first team will usually win, as perhaps best illustrated by the task in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iq2EcDgqXg Series 4 in the UK]. (The ads begin at 0:30 and 2:48, and Alan Sugar voices his opinion on Dada Ads at 4:13)
▲** There was one time when ''both'' teams (tasked with advertising a body wash) came out with something like this. One depicted a runner splashing the soap ''on his face, without rinsing it off,'' and the other was entirely themed around gay sex innuendo, which doesn't fly on mainstream US advertising. Needless to say, ''neither'' team won this round.
▲** Alan Sugar once described this trope as one of his pet hates on ''Room 101'' so it's not surprising he would rule against ads using it.
▲** Although some of those ads were horrible anyway, like the already infamous Pantsman advert from the most recent series. An attempt to sell a cereal called Wake Up Call by advertising it as what you need to stop you [[What an Idiot!|putting your pants on over your clothes]]. And the mascot was Pantsman, a superhero who wears his pants over his clothes. The team [[Hand Wave|Handwaved]] the [[Fridge Logic]] of this by saying only Pantsman can wear his pants over his trousers, [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|never mind that most kids view superheroes as role models and want to do what they do]]. Unsurprisingly, they lost and Philip, the creator of Pantsman, will most likely [[Never Live It Down]]. Because [[Who Would Be Stupid Enough...?]] to design an advertising campaign based on pants?
▲*** [[Did Not Do the Research|Creator]] of Pantsman? [[VG Cats|Scott Ramsoomair]] has a lawsuit on his hands then.
▲* ''[[The Gruen Transfer]]'' has two regular segments that deals with this type of ad: "What Does It Mean?", in which they often contact the original ad agency to explain what was going on, and "What Is It For?" in which the product shot is cut off the end, and the panelists have to guess which product is being advertised.
▲* A ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'' episode featured an eccentric businessman played by [[Steve Martin]], who owned a company called SunStream. Eventually, it's revealed that he's a fraud and SunStream is a sham company. He points out that "If you ever watched our commercials, we never said what we did" and then the show [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlymNLAAzUM cuts to one such ad].
▲== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
▲* Mocked at least once in ''[[Dilbert]]'' with the Amorphous Ad Company.
== [[Stand-Up Comedy]] ==
▲* [[Ron White]] uses this trope in one of his comedy routines. He says perfume ads have become too complex for simple men like himself. Then he describes an over-the-top Dada Ad which ends with a man on fire and sensual woman saying, "I would know him in the dark." The punchline is, "What's the trick? He's
== [[Web Comics]] ==▼
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081211145416/http://www.instantclassic.net/story.php?comicID=29 Parodied] in the prologue of Brian Carroll's
== [[Web Original]] ==
* [[Neal Boortz]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20101121221709/http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2009/06/is-there-anyone-out-there.html expresses his confusion at the Lexis IS] ads.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZyNBK6M6BQ The third Powerthirst ad] by [[Picnicface (series)|Picnicface]]. While the other two were fairly straight [[Testosterone Poisoning]]-driven tirades, this one...well...''Drink Powerthirst! Shoot the clouds! Hit Jesus! Strap him to a bull! JESUS RODEO, DEAD JESUS RODEO!''
* [[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC|Lars M. Dusseldorf]] made a commercial for the 2011 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo featuring random dancers, a song with lyrics that constantly repeated, "C2. E2.", and such phrases as, "Are C2 and E2 lost in a world without meaning? No. C2E2 is '''life!'''"
▲* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has articles about [http://www.cracked.com/article_17574_7-insane-ads-that-have-no-clue-what-theyre-selling.html 7 such ads] and [http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-obnoxious-ads-that-donE28099t-even-try-to-sell-their-products/ 6 more].
▲== [[Web Comics]] ==
▲* [http://www.instantclassic.net/story.php?comicID=29 Parodied] in the prologue of Brian Carroll's webcomic ''Instant Classic''.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* Parodied in ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'' in the episode where the sectors are showing off their latest advancements in two-by-four technology. Many groups put together small video presentations about their inventions. The French KND shows off their invention with a black and white video about absolutely nothing coherent. The operatives evaluating the inventions and demonstrations calls off the ad part of the way through and just asks outright what it's supposed to be advertising. Their response is essentially that [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]].
* ''[[The Problem Solverz]]'' episode "Breakfast Warz" features a commercial for Professor Sugar Fish's Psycho Puffs of Madness cereal, which involves a kid flopping around with a giant rainbow-colored fish laughing in Morse code while their house burns down and bright neon colors flash everywhere. After viewing the commercial, Horace responds with, "Well, ''that'' was crazy..."
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* Boxman, a short-lived early British online music and video retailer, failed largely because its adverts, showing a suited man with a cardboard box over his head dropped into random scenes, completely failed to explain what it was.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Advertising Tropes]]▼
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
▲[[Category:Advertising Tropes]]
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