Scapegoat Ad: Difference between revisions

The brand name and its competitor(s) will be represented by employees of the respective companies, usually low-level workers such as cashiers, stockboys or delivery drivers. When the shortcomings of the competitor are inevitably brought up, they are pinned directly on that company's employee -- asemployee—as if to imply that this minimum-wage grunt is actually responsible for company policy. Sometimes the employee will be a [[Jerkass]] and/or fanatically supportive of his employer's policies, thus justifying everyone's ire; but he is as often as not an innocent scapegoat, which can inadvertently turn him into [[The Woobie]].

This is also a case of [[Values Dissonance]], as in mostsome countries, comparative publicity (that is calling your competitor by name in an ad) is prohibited because their trademarks rights allow them to prevent competitors for using their name in marketing campaigns even if itsit's for comparison purposes. In the U.S., however, the[[wikipedia:nominative rightuse|nominative touse]] engage isin comparative publicity is protected by the firstFirst amendmentAmendment. Cue touristtourists from other countries being shocked when seeing this type of ads in American TV.

* Similar to the Progressive ad, a recent{{when}} campaign for Lending Tree features a woman breaking the news to her banker that she's defecting to Lending Tree; the punchline is his stunned response of "But Karen, you ''work'' here!"

* Similarly, in recent{{when}} Alltel commercials, Alltel is represented by a popular looking guy named Chad. All other companies are represented by a group of comically inept [[Butt Monkey]] nerds who want nothing more to stop him from selling phone plans. Chad still comes off as a [[Jerkass]].

** Plus, they take a shot at [[Dungeons and& Dragons|D&D]] players. Alltel can stick a +5 vorpal up their keisters.

* Verizon FIOS ads have the friendly, cute and helpful Verizon employee vs. the socially inept, rock stupid and dishonest cable guy.

* Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile get down right vitriolic over this stuff. Almost every add for them for a while was mostly a company spokesman mocking the claims of the other companies.

* T-Mobile's most recent{{when}} ads (comparing their 4G phone to the iPhone) are similar in set-up to the Mac and PC ads, but are generally more fair to Apple. T-Mobile is represented by an attractive woman in a pink dress, but the iPhone is represented by a handsome man. The scapegoat here is the [[Evil Lawyer Joke|lawyer]] who hangs around the iPhone and represents the AT&T subscription plan. ("Why pay more to get less?" "[[Insane Troll Logic|It makes sense, if you don't think about it.]]")

* Cable One has been running ads about AT&T's "U-Verse" service. U-Verse is offered by a rude, snarky schlub of an installer who talks about U-Verse costing more and being worse service as if these things are [[Insane Troll Logic|positive features]]--unsubtly—unsubtly implying that AT&T thinks all their potential customers are idiots. He brings along a [[Straw Man|cardboard cutout]] of a Cable One guy, for some reason. The series of commercials, ending with the [[Sarcasm Mode|oh-so-clever]] tagline "Maybe it's really ''[[Incredibly Lame Pun|you versus AT&T]]''," always feature the same guy.

* A recent{{when}} ad campaign for Pepsi Max features two delivery truck drivers, one for the "good guys" and one for Coke Zero. The drivers make friends and swap drinks, but as soon as the Pepsi bottle gets to the Coke driver's lips, the Pepsi driver is snapping a picture with his camera-phone. The problem with this ad is that it makes the Coke driver look like a nice guy whose trust was betrayed by the [[Jerkass]] Pepsi driver, especially seeing as a picture like that could easily get the Coke driver fired.

* An older (circa 2004) Pepsi ad--thisad—this one featuring Pepsi Vanilla vs Vanilla Coke--featuredCoke—featured two drivers at a stop light. The V-Coke driver cranks up the music on his radio (playing an older rock song) and the Pepsi-V guy responded by flipping a switch that transformed his delivery truck into a gaudy, hydraulic-bouncing, oversized, low-rider wanna-be truck that was blasting a generic hip-hop track. The Ad failed for three reasons:

** The ads are noted by some as repeatedly backfiring -- onebackfiring—one ad, for example, attempts to criticize the PC for being too focused on the mass market, but ends up painting Apples as being inferior for home use. Another makes fun of the PC for being used to work with spreadsheets and other "boring" applications--youapplications—you know, stuff that ''people use computers for''.

** Recently{{when}}, Microsoft has ''finally'' unleashed a series of counter-ads to this campaign.

*** [http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/commit/?id=92617aeac109481258f0c3863d09c1b8903d438b Linux now has D3D11 support]. It's only hooked up to software rasterizers at the moment,<ref>this means it runs on anything Mesa does, but you'll need decent support from LLVM to get anything approaching usable speed</ref>, but that's not all too hard to fix.

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