Notable Commercial Campaigns: Difference between revisions

** 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.

** "I just want to make an omelette!"

** 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.

** It's okay to be yourself / because [[Word Salad Lyrics|you are...you]] / It's okay to release your [[Painful Rhyme|pwrfl]]...power.... / 'cause it [[Hollywood Tone Deaf|feeeeeeeeeels goooooooo-hoooooood~!]]! ♪

** 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.]]

* On the subject of insurance companies: Progressive Insurance has been running a series of ads featuring Flo, an [[Adorkable]] [[Cloudcuckoolander]] with a '60s hairstyle and a big, tricked-out name tag. Unlike Erin's commercials, Flo's are still trucking, likely because her commercials contain much less blatant [[Fan Service]].

* 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!]]"

* [[Badass Baritone|HO HO HO]]. Green Giant.

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

** Their later "I can't believe I ate the ''whole thing''" ad is still remembered nearly 30 years after its creation. (It was remade in 2005 with actors from ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]''.)

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

** This too was referenced by ''Everyone Loves Raymond'', in an episode where Loggia guest-stars.

** 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.

* Ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach's ads for the original VW Beetle (print and TV) have become textbook examples (literally). Not only did VW adopt the format for their ads worldwide, but they changed the ''entire look of print advertising'' in the course of five years or so. Incidentally, DDB was a Jewish-owned company known for "Yiddish wit", in a WASP-dominated industry. Applying that to a German product founded by the Nazi regime in an era when memories of [[World War Two]] were just beginning to fade removed a lot of [[Unfortunate Implications]]. These ads actually managed to coin THE catchphrase for the Beetle in Germany: "It runs and runs and runs..."

* 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".

** The first commercial was the "Awwon Buww," ad by [[Michael Bay]]. And starring [[Rob Paulsen]].

** Nintendo even took a part in the ad for a short time during the Nintendo 64 days. Mario would be [[Cutscene Incompetence|trying to jump up to a high platform in his game world and then get exhausted from hitting his head repeatedly on the side of it]]. He then jumped out of the TV screen and walk into the kitchen to drink some milk, which made him '''huge!''' Mario then went back into the TV and continued the game as a giant, being able to climb up said platform.

** 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.

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

* American Express's "do you know me?" campaign in the 1980's, which was [[Parodied Trope|parodied]] by a [[Whammy]] on ''[[Press Your Luck]]'', as well as in the movie ''[[Major League]]''. "Hi! Do you know us? We're a Major League Baseball team!"

* "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?]]}}<br />

* The very, very lonely Maytag (appliance) Repairman.

* Oddly enough, this doesn't often overlap with [[Celebrity Endorsement|Celebrity Endorsements]]. 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.

* "Riiiii-co-laaaaa!"

* Nike reminds you to "Just do it".

* The wannabe Foster Farms chickens.

* 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.

* We've secretly replaced this TV Tropes page with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference.

** 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.]]

** Hilariously parodied on [[The Simpsons]] with an commercial starring a young [[Captain Ersatz|Rainer Wolfcastle]].

{{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!"

** (xkcd had [http://xkcd.com/491/ something to say about that one.])

* [[Sega Genesis|Genesis]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nsBoqJ6s8 does] [[Take That|what]] [[NES|Nintendon't!]]

{{quote| W E L C O<br />

** The Japanese tagline at the end of some of the early Playstation ads ("pureisuteishon!")

** Live in your world, play in ours.

* "Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" At one point, counters were sold so that you could find out.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSxnieYctVM "Hey, this picante sauce was made in New York City!"]

* The ''This is Your Brain on Drugs'' PSA, which used a frying egg to make its point, has been widely parodied in other media. E.g. "And this is your brain with a side of bacon and hash browns." Any questions?

* Who are you calling [[Big Stupid Doodoo Head|a cootie queen]], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEJJUGJZxpU you lint licker]?!

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkd5dJIVjgM "Moo." "Cow."]

** Which replaced this long-running campaign: "Old Spice means quality, said the Captain to the Bosun, So look for the package with the ship that sails the ocean. Yo ho, yo ho."

* The Piels Bros. beer commercials of the late 50's, featuring animated [[Odd Couple]] siblings Bert and Harry Piel, as voiced by then-hot comics [[Bob and Ray|Bob & Ray]]. Widely conceded to be far superior to the product itself; at the campaign's peak, upcoming spots were actually ''listed in TVGuide''.

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

* Coors Light has a series of commercials in which two fans would ask football coaches questions and the "responses" would be spliced in, usually from an infamous or memetic press conference. Jim Mora's "Playoffs?" rant came into play, as did one of Bill Parcells'.

* The old commercials where Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble ''promoted smoking cigarettes''. Mitigated somewhat when you realise ''[[The Flintstones]]'' was considered an adult sitcom at the time (it aired in prime-time, not Saturday morning), but still...

* Reebok introduced a mascot called "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker," a man who would lay out vicious tackles on his office mates for minor infractions. His character became so popular that Epic basically made him a playable character in ''[[Gears of War]]''.

{{quote| (Man takes last cup of coffee, Terry tackles him) '''Terry Tate''': You can't break that weak-ass **** up in this humpty-bumpty! You kill the joe, you make some mo'! WOOOOOOOOOOO! }}

* 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.

* Pizza Hut's Pizza Face- [[Saturday Night Live|Mr. Bill]] if he were a slice of pizza.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf3oOQq9KFU This] pantyhose commercial is even funnier if you know that {{spoiler|Joe Namath got a lot of flack for having long hair which was considered extremely girly by older people in [[The Sixties]]. By making this commercial, he was intentionally invoking [[Stupid Sexy Flanders]] as a [[Take That]].}}

* Molson Canadian's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRI-A3vakVg 'I Am Canadian'] ad. Basically an average Canadian gets on a stage and systematically refutes pervasive stereotypes of Canadians.

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

*** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZrNWEPUsH0&feature=related What to drink when you're chasing beaver]

*** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-5hP9qDVwI being made fun of by Americans]

* R. White's Lemonade introduced its "secret lemonade drinker" campaign in the early 1970s. The second ad, which featured a man sneaking downstairs to raid the fridge in an (unsuccessful) attempt to prevent his wife from discovering his secret habit, was so successful that it was still running more than a decade later.

* Another long running campaign was for Cadbury's Flake bars, which featured various young ladies enjoying the sensual pleasure of crumbly chocolate in private. "Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate never tasted before." Recently brought back, with Joss Stone.

{{quote| '''Son''': Dad, do you know the piano's on my foot?<br />

'''Dad''': You hum it, son - I'll play it. }}

* "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet's" is still remembered over 20 years after the UK banned tobacco advertising on TV.

* The OXO stock cube adds involving Lynda Bellingham are so well known, she's become known as the "OXO cube mum", despite a considerable career with other roles.

* Cillit Bang managed to make an extremely well-known advert on practically zero budget. How? HI! [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKjjEctWuo&feature=related I'M BARRY SCOTT]! [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qM98wbXFAzc&feature=related LIP-SYNCED SHOUTING] AND [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMD_z_FnNk&feature=related CHEESY FORCED DIALOGUE]! [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVaLFbLFOM&feature=related LOOK HOW IT GETS THIS PENNY]! Hey, it's notable, I never said it was ''good''.

* Directory Enquiries service 118 118 have done some memorable ones, but the one where they re-wrote the lyrics to the [[Theme Tune]] to ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' and got Roy Parker Jr. to sing the modified lyrics tops the lot. The relevant ads included many a pun on "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!":

* "Compare The Meercat Dot Com; Compare The ''Market'' Dot Com. Simples!"

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8CTscW3dpI You do the shake and vac, and put the freshness back.]

* Vic's Sinex "Course you can, Malcolm!" adverts became [[Memetic Mutation]] in [[The Seventies]].

* Churchill Car Insurance, after years of fairly straightforward adverts, became notable after they adopted a [[Winston Churchill]]-like bulldog asked questions about insurance by an unseen narrator (originally voiced by [[The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer|Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer]]) who replies "Oh, yes!"

 

== Japan ==

* [[Pocky]].

* 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].

== France ==

* The swedish company Krisprolls was made very famous in France by its late 90's advertising campaign, which told of one Swede's struggle to eat Krisprolls toasts behind his wife's back. The ads ended either with said wife catching him red-handed (uttering a suspicious "Ingmar...") or with her ''almost'' catching him, in which case he would pretend to totally not be eating toast by, say, ''acting like the toast is a bird, throwing it into the air and looking at the sky in awe while the toast falls down on the ground''. [http://www.pagen.com/ingmar/poster.htm It should be seen].

 

 

* The Axe/Lynx Effect.

* Heineken knows that [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIutgtzwhAc every man wants a walk-in beer fridge.]

* iPod's dancing silhouettes against multicolored backgrounds.

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