Notable Commercial Campaigns: Difference between revisions

** Before that, it was a series of ads about the Budweiser Clydesdales (horses) that pull the cart.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L38wthA4Ld0 Wassup.]

** One '[[Bad News, Irrelevant News]]' parody; the bad news was always something horrible like "You have cancer" and the "good" news was always "I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by [[Switching to GEICO]]"

** A series of [[Commercial Switcheroo]] ads. It slices, it dices, it regrows hair, it grates cheese, "but it won't save you any money on car insurance."

** One [[Show Within a Show|fictional series]] with the tagline "So easy a caveman could do it," with the real series following the cavemen offended by it. They somehow got their own sitcom, though it was quickly cancelled. Notably, the caveman has been in GEICO commercials for years, but without re-telling the original joke or using the slogan. Unless one were familiar with the original ad, they'd have no idea why a hairy guy keeps getting offended at the mere mention of GEICO.

** Fictional exposes on well-known TV characters, such as revealing that [[The Beverly Hillbillies|Jed]] ''really'' made his fortune from the money he saved on his car insurance.

** And of course, the Geico gecko, who would originally complain about people mistaking the word "gecko" for the word "Geico", but has since become a more amiable mascot, talking intelligently about the virtues of Geico. They're different geckos. How can you tell? The new gecko has a Cockney accent; the old one's accent was more upper-class. When the gecko became a real mascot rather than a one off joke, they eventually changed the accent from "refined" to a more common accent, so that he would sound more appealing...replacing [[Hey, It's That Voice!|Kelsey]] [[Kelsey Grammer|Grammer]] in the process.

** A car drives along a twisty mountain road. A squirrel darts into its path and the car swerves to miss it, careening off the road. A second squirrel appears and slaps paws with the first one as if to say, "You da squirrel!"

** A stack of bills with plastic googly eyes sitting on top, representing "the money you could be saving with Geico." Hey, nobody bats a thousand.

** [[Michael McGlone]] asking "Could switching to GEICO really save you 15% or more on car insurance?" followed by a random question: "Is Ed "Too Tall" Jones too tall? Does [[Looney Tunes|Elmer Fudd]] have trouble with [[Elmuh Fudd Syndwome|the letter R]]?"... "Did the cavemen invent fire?" [[Call Back|*switch to GEICO caveman on a couch]], who uses a remote to 'turn on' the flame in his fireplace after looking at the camera and making a 'goddammit leave me alone' face*

** In the 2010-11 commercials, Erin came back, though only [[The Artifact|as a still graphic on a wall]] in the call center they showed.

** Now that Allstate owns Esurance, the call center commercials have been dropped in favor of a new campaign narrated by [[The Office|John Krasinski]]. Erin is completely gone, and that fact is somewhat [[Lampshaded]] in one commercial where Krasinski intones that Esurance [[Take That|doesn't need a mascot to sell insurance.]]

* [[Ernest P. Worrell]] got his start as a spokesman for practically everything under the sun.

* From a 1970s ad for Calgon water softener: "How do you get shirts so clean, [[Chinese Launderer|Mr. Lee?]]" "[[Stop Being Stereotypical|Ancient Chinese secret!]]"

** [[Nightmare Fuel|Ho, hum, hi, he's, the jolly Green Giant you see on the label with golden corn and tender peas, the jolly Green Giant will set up your table]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|with golden corn and tender peas,]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_fxLZb_qXY the jolly Green Giant is he...]

* Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

** This didn't stop him from making a cameo appearance in a Geico commercial.

{{quote|''"Oh, great...a talking gecko."''}}

* Alka-Seltzer: "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is..."

** Similarly, an Alka-Seltzer commercial featuring an Italian man repeatedly screwing up a "Spicy Meat-a-ball" commercial and requiring the product after a number of takes, usually finds its way near the top of "best commercials" lists. Unfortunately, though hilarious, most viewers thought it was an advertisement for the meatballs. This ad was parodied in the movie ''[[The Mask (film)|The Mask]]'' when Jim Carrey (wearing The Mask, so he was able to do this) swallows a bomb, which explodes in his stomach, he then blows a smoke ring and announces "Now that's a spicy meat-a-ball!".

* '''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZIzRqDOSZo WHOA, Robert Loggia!]'''... technically, at least, for Minute Maid juice.

* The television ad for the console version of the first ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' (involving teenage boys yelling in a deep voice for the game) was so well-known and famous for its deep-throated yell that it was sampled for the theme to [[The Movie]].

* Guinness's US ads:

** Of note was that Eveready could dish it out, but they couldn't take it. When Coors Beer decided to hire Leslie Nielsen to wear a pink bunny outfit in order to satirize the Energizer Bunny campaign, Eveready ''sued'' Coors to stop the ad. The judge in the case ruled Coors' ad was a valid parody, in part saying in his decision, "Mr. Nielsen is not a toy, and does not run on batteries."

** Also interestingly, the Energizer bunny was a direct spoof of a series of ads for competitor Duracell which featured a toy bunny. This has led to an interesting situation where Energizer is associated with bunnies in the US and Canada, but Duracell has that distinction in most other countries.

* DeBeers developed the slogan "A diamond is forever", specifically to reduce the diamond after-market. If a diamond really is "forever", then obviously you can't pawn it or resell it. And certainly you can't give your love a ''used'' "forever".

** How to speak Australian:

{{quote|[guy is crushed by boulder] <small>[[Major Injury Underreaction|"ow."]]</small>

** Coke even popularized the modern appearance of Santa Claus with their advertisements. How's ''that'' for a lasting ad campaign?

** Dunno if it had a very long run, but one of the best commercials of the 2007 Super Bowl was a Coke ad that started like a [[Grand Theft Auto]] style game. Car swerves through the streets, stops, badass gets out, walks into a convenience store, takes a Coke out of the cooler, and takes a drink. It turns into a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] pretty quickly; link [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEfC5-OA4w here].

* The Taster's Choice commercial campaign that made an engaging romance about a couple bantering about coffee.

* In a similar vein, [[Crack Pairing|Teri Hatcher and Howie Long]] (?) flirted in a series of ads for Radio Shack.

* Arrow Shirts' classic commercial. The perfect way to smash a stogy image with a joyful, colorful noise [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFA5-H9D3CQ Youtube]

* "Got Milk?"—developed in 1993 by ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board. "Got Milk?" was just the latest of a string of campaigns the CMPB commissioned in hopes to stop the slow but steady decline in milk sales that had plagued CMPB dairies for decades. It worked. By 2000, sales figures had leveled off, but sales increases were almost non-existent. In an interview regarding the campaign, a CMPB spokesman said the group was thrilled with flat sales figures after so many years of losses. GS&P and the CMPB later licensed the ad campaign to other state milk boards. (Note: California is a milk monopoly state, meaning it is one of many states that restricts the importation of fluid milk from other states. In 2000, when the price of a gallon of milk in non-monopoly states averaged about $2.00, the price of a gallon in California was about $3.75. Yet, tellingly, because the federal WIC program mandated that beneficiaries of the program be allowed to buy two gallons for $4.00, the CMPB allowed California supermarkets to sell one gallon for $3.75 and then a second for 25 cents. In non-monopoly states, milk sales never experienced the declining milk sales that milk monopoly states have. So, if you've seen a lot of "Got Milk?" commercials in your lifetime, you were probably living in a milk monopoly state at the time.)

** Other pictorial Got Milk? ads featured various Ms. Fanservices from various industries (movie, music, video games) with rather... suggestive appearances involving milk.

** A particularly memorable ad featured the Trix rabbit, in a live-action and realistic setting, claiming victory in buying Trix (which the cashier recognizes is for kids) from a grocery store (in a human costume), an emotion which soon turned to sadness as he forgot to buy milk.

* Quiznos' commercials featuring the Spongmonkeys are notable in that it's the first time that an [[Memetic Mutation|Internet meme]] was commercially exploited. You either loved or hated the commercials that resulted; the ''Modern Humorist'' commented that they are "what you see before you die." On the other hand, "they've got a pepper bar!"

* MasterCard's oft-parodied "Priceless" commercials.

* "Hello, I'm a [[Apple Macintosh|Mac.]]" "And I'm a [[IBM Personal Computer|PC]]..."

{{quote|'''Antivirus''': {{smallcaps|You are coming to a crushing realization. [[Running Gag|Allow?]]}}

** One of the most memorable ads in this campaign features PC stuffed up with [[Hotel Mario|lotsa]] programs and he's running slow. Somehow, this means when he's a human, he's super fat.

** In fact, this campaign is so successful, it's spawned [[Yaoi Fangirl|a Livejournal community dedicated to slashing]] [[Foe Yay|the guys playing PC/Mac.]]

** Microsoft later responded with their "I'm a PC" ads.

** "...and Windows 7 was my idea."

* Wendy's "Where's the beef?" campaign became one of the most widely quoted [[Catch Phrase|catchphrases]] in the 1984 US Presidential election campaign.

* "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" For all the serious nature of the product, the Life Alert call button, it was an unforgettable line.

* NBC has a couple. "Must See TV" and "[[And Knowing Is Half the Battle|The More You Know]]".

* "I dreamed I wrote this example in my Maidenform Bra."

* The Marlboro Man, although that's loaded with [[Unfortunate Implications]] now. Especially after a couple of the models involved later sued the company whilst dying of lung cancer.

* Oddly enough, this doesn't often overlap with [[Celebrity Endorsement]]s. Usually it's just an individual ad that becomes iconic. "What Becomes a Legend Most?" for [[Pretty in Mink|Blackglama Mink]] is an example of a whole campaign, because the very premise of the campaign was celebrities selling the product. And as the slogan states, these were the legends (like [[Audrey Hepburn]] in the picture), not any up-and-comers.

* The Pets.com sock puppet dog. Most notable for claiming copyright infringement on [[Conan O'Brien]]'s "Triumph, the insult comic dog", then subsequently going out of business.

* The American Dairy Association once ran a series of ads with the [[Catch Phrase]] "Behold the power of cheese" (Later changed to "Ah, the power of cheese"). While the various ads varied wildly in effectiveness, one particularly brilliant one started out by showing multiple scenes of a city being destroyed by [[Alien Invasion|aliens]] or [[Kaiju]] monsters. Halfway through one civilian mutters "Isn't it time for 'here I come to save the day'?!!" We then cut to a scene of [[Mighty Mouse]] calmly eating cheese while the city is being pummeled, and even at one point holding up a single finger while people pound on the window to get his attention. Cue the catchphrase.

* Dost thou love [[wikipedia:Life (cereal)|Life]]? Well, "Mikey likes it". (Something of a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]]—the actual line is "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!!")

** This was hilariously spoofed in a ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch with an outtake where a customer played by Chris Farley [[Berserk Button|completely loses his mind]] [[Go Mad from the Revelation|upon being told this was not the coffee he ordered.]]

** [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/3/25/ This] Penny Arcade comic imitates this format to slight the hugeness of the original Xbox controller.

* The Discovery Channel thinks the world is just so ''awesome'', it deserves its own theme song. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ ("Boom-de-yada!")]

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcmq1FPDmoA McDonaldLand.]

** "You deserve a break today...", which premiered around 1981 but has come back a few times since.

** [[Scatting|Bah bah bah bah BAH!]] [[Justin Timberlake|I'm lovin' it.]]

* Domino's Pizza introduced the 'Noid, an odd man in a rabbit costume who makes it his business to stomp on pizzas.

* "My bologna has a first name/ It's O-S-C-A-R. My bolgona has a second name/ It's M-A-Y-E-R." Couple that with the iconic Weinermobile (for Oscar Meyer's hot dogs).

{{quote|'''Rainer Wolfcastle''': [singing] Mein bratwurst has a first name, it's F-R-I-T-Z / Mein bratwurst has a second name, it's S-C-H-N-A-C-K-E-N-P-F-E-F-F-E-R-H-A-U-S-E-N. }}

* Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers: "...and thank you for your support."

* Star-Kist Tuna's Charlie the Tuna, and his hilarious if vaguely [[Let's Meet the Meat|disturbing obsession]] with being classy enough to be put in a can. "Sorry Charlie, Star-Kist doesn't want tuna with good taste... Star-Kist wants tuna that tastes good!"

* '''HI, [[Billy Mays]] HERE!!'''...for miracle stain remover OxiClean, among many other things.

** Hilariously parodied on, of all things, UK children's series ''[[Horrible Histories (TV series)|Horrible Histories]]'': "HELLO, I'M A SHOUTY MAN!!"

* The Pepsi [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdafSHne5wM 'Forever Young'] adverts. Pretty much [[Sweet Dreams Fuel]].

** Before which, they would like to invite you to become part of the hip, young Pepsi Generation.

** And before ''that''... "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/Twelve full ounces, that's a lot!"

* Timex watches spawned a mid-20th century [[Memetic Mutation]]: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking!"

* "Hey, dude, you're gettin' a Dell!" Though Dell Computer denies it, and says they were ready to retire that line of commercials, most still think that that guy shot himself in the foot when he was arrested for drug possession.

* "I want my Maypo!"

* Choo Choo Charlie for Good'n'Plenty candies.

* "Call for Philip Morr-eees..."

* "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star" for Texaco gas stations.

* "The bigger the burger, the better the burger, the burgers are bigger at Burger King."

** There's also the campaign starring 'Herb, the one man in America who has never eaten at a Burger King', which is memorable for just how spectacularly it ''failed''.

* "We love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet."

* The adventures of Jack Box, mascot CEO of the Jack In The Box fast-food chain, the longest-running campaign in television history.

* The current generation will never, ever, ever forget the Empire phone number. 800 588 2300. [[Ear Worm|IT WILL NEVER LEAVE]].

* If you watched any television at all in the 1970s, you may remember the commercials for Wisk. One of the very first mass-marketed liquid laundry detergents, Wisk's advertising executives built nearly a decade of commercials around being able to pretreat collar stains with it—with a side dose of horror and looming insanity. The initial run of ads seemed innocuous enough: housewives being embarrassed by children dancing around their drying laundry and chanting "Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!" at the white dress shirts hanging there. But within a couple of years, the ''shirts themselves'', fresh from the laundry, would [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3N_skYSGoY taunt increasingly distressed homemakers] over their inability to remove the grey line from inside collars using "ordinary" powder detergents. Eventually the campaign escalated to the point where the shirts would hurl themselves out of the dryer or laundry basket, flailing through the air as though demonically possessed while shrieking "Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!" at the poor women while they cowered, fearing for both life and sanity. Naturally, the campaign was ripe for parody, and eventually it seemed the advertising agency realized this; by 1980, the commercials had abandoned the possessed shirts and had ramped the hysteria down into a much more low-key approach, while ''still'' staying rather psychotically fixated on the horrors of collar stains. (A problem which, more than one satirist pointed out, could be solved much easier by ''making the wearer of the shirts wash his neck better''.)

* The Norelco Christmas ad has been running annually since at least the late 1960s. Animated in [[Stop Motion]], it features a Santa gliding smoothly over snow-covered hills and dales in a giant Norelco razor, and ends with the announcer declaring, "Even our name says 'Merry Christmas'", while "Noelco" appears on the screen.

** Also, great though Neil Diamond is, Labatt is single-handedly responsible for why "Sweet Caroline" remains popular to younger people.

** A brief-but-popular mid-eighties campaign traded on both the brand name and Canada's multiculturalism: "So I go into La bar, and I order La beer..."

** Molson does this a lot actually. Some of the more popular ones include:

*** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpj1zgyfScM Attack beaver] ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]])

** BECAUSE: [[Most Annoying Sound|I'm the Cash Man! I give you money for your- GOLD, oh yeah! Yes, I'm the Cash Man! I give you money for your- GOLD OOOOHHH YEEEAAAH!]]

* ''When you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?/Do you suck them very slowly, or crunch them very fast?/Eat those candy-coated chocolates, but tell me when I ask:/When you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?''<ref>Sing it to the tune of the old novelty song "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?"</ref>

* Canada's iconic coffee'n'donut chain has equally pervasive taglines: "You've always got time for Tim Hortons!". Alternatively, "Always Fresh at Tim Hortons!"

* "Sleep Country Can-a-da! Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"

** Bizarrely, that jingle is know widely outside of Canada; in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, that is (just replace the "Can-a-da!" part of the jingle with "U.S.A.!"). For some reason, Sleep Country decided to expand its brand.... but only into Washington and Oregon, where the jingle is very much a local in-joke, with one of Sleep Country's commercials [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbUvchOdb4Q being parodied] by a Western Washington company who themselves are well known for ''their'' commercials.

* The War Amps commercial featuring the android running through the [[Death Course]]. "I can put my arm back on, you can't." The live action version is considered superior to the later CGI version.

* Similar to the Canadian Heritage Minute are the ''Hinterland Who's Who'' vignettes, which were spoofed at least once on ''[[SCTV]]''. The original versions were a brief description of a notable Canadian animal, the more recent ones are more explicitly environmental.

* In the last several years, there's been a campaign where a character is about to leave the house and starts having a hallucination giving the message "You are way too high to drive." Notable in that the message is ''not'' the simplistic "Don't use drugs", but "Don't toke up/snort/inject and drive."

* We see your American and Australian Coke commercials and give you [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99msEwWpJBE this].

* Canuck AT&T-analog Rogers Cable ran a series of ads featuring three French-Canadian friends in Montreal, having hilarious and often absurd adventures featuring Rogers Mobility features.

* The Get A Load of Milk campaign. Short (5 seconds) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTA4Jp2ifbA clips] showing what milk can do you for you. They always end with that cowbell sound.

 

== United Kingdom ==

* Guinness ads are particularly well known, with "Surfer" ("he waits, that's what he does"), "Noitulove" (which features three men backwards evolving to the tune of "The Rhythm of Life") and a long chain of dominoes ad. "You don't pour a Guinness, you bring it to life." The ad itself is pretty awesome though.

* Halifax has achieved some notability in recent years with its rewritten pop songs featuring real staff from the company. Most Halifax ads traditionally feature a large crowd of people forming an X in the middle of a wide open area.

** "Cog" was also notable because all the parts came from one Civic - a pre-production prototype that was precisely-engineered, hand-crafted, and worth a few million dollars before the ad company took it apart.

* Hovis bread had a campaign featuring nostalgic reconstructions of Britain in the 1920s and '30s, with the tagline "still as good for you today as it's always been". Ironically they were accompanied by a brass band playing Dvorak's ''New World Symphony'', a piece of music which had been inspired by the American West.

== Japan ==

* The success of the Sega Saturn in Japan tends to be attributed to one man: [[Segata Sanshiro]] ([[Hiroshi Fujioka]]), a [[Badass]] judo master who trains in the mountains with a giant Saturn console, beats up people for not playing enough Saturn games, and [[Stuff Blowing Up|turns unfortunate opponents into human bombs by throwing them hella far]]. He was eventually retired with the Saturn in a glorious manner, by [[Heroic Sacrifice|saving Sega from a terrorist attack]], but not before he was given his own action figure, music video, and video game. "Segata Sanshiro! Segata Sanshiro! Sega Saturn shiro~!"

* Interestingly, the '''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD-_oLjmCGY MORNING RESUCE]''' was kept for the overseas release of ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'' subs, and it reached [[Memetic Mutation|memetic status]] due to the [[Soundtrack Dissonance]] when compared to the anime. [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/morning-rescue Know Your Meme goes more in-depth].

 

== Mexico ==

* The Telmex long distance ads, featuring a man saying "CALL HIM!" ("¡HBLELE!") in a ludicrously overblown Monterrey accent (which, for the record, is equivalent to Texan/Deep South).

* The Saladitas salty crackers ad, featuring a Chinese boy in a Mexican family saying "People, I have to tell you something... I think I'm adopted", but everybody ignores him and keeps commenting on the crackers. In a sweet, awesome case of meta-advertising, the [[Super Bowl Special|Beijing Olympics 2008 Special]] features the same commercial, ''but reversed,'' starring a Mexican boy in a Chinese family saying exactly the same lines in Mandarin.

 

== Ireland ==

* Victoria Bitter had an ad campaign that began late-80s/early-90s that is still recognizable today.

* Australian Yellow Pages has had a few memorable ads, including the Goggomobile Guy and "Not Happy, Jan!"

* And then there's the Telstra ad which teaches us that Emperor Nasi Goreng build the Great Wall of China to keep the rabbits out.

* Qantas has run various versions over the years of their now iconic ads, involving a children's choir sing "I Still Call Australia Home" at various places around the world. Watch it [strike:[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9bbzvdYi7g&feature=related here] (deleted for TOS violation), instead [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX5UR2leYHA go here!] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRIIxRQjmbk or here]

{{quote|"There's nothing like this bear!"

"<small>[[Somewhere a Mammalogist Is Crying|That's not a bear]]</small>." }}

 

== France ==

 

== Sweden ==

* Back in the late nineties, a guy dressed up to look like a tablet sung a stupid little ditty on how the painkiller Ipren is intelligent enough to know which part of your body hurts. Everybody loved it except the government, who decided it was false advertisement to call a brand of painkillers "intelligent". Of course, this caused people to love it even more, and the melody of the ditty to appear in the background of that company's commercials for ''years''. It was only the text that was banned, you see...

* The commercials for the retailing company ICA, which portrays a floorwalker, his employees, and their regular trials in a regular retail store (while the camera highlights several products and their prices). Has been going on since 2001, with over 300 episodes.

 

== Russia ==

* [[wikipedia:World History. Bank Imperial|World History. Bank Imperial]]. Unsurpassed to this day epic masterpieces of storytelling each just one of one minute long, with characters and lines becoming part of the modern cultural background. The impact and quality of these ads look even more fantastic today considering when and where they were made (chaos of the middle 90s in Russia, and that was one of very first tv ads ex-soviet audience saw).

 

== International ==

* iPod's dancing silhouettes against multicolored backgrounds.

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X21mJh6j9i4 Never Say No to Panda.]"

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIYvD9DI1ZA I've been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.]"

 

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