Exactly.

Why I don't have Google Ads or any other ad aggregators on this blog...this ad appeared on Americablog this morning:



(Don't bother clicking through, it's just an image.)

At first I thought it was a parody: "The ONLY magazine for the middle-market C-level executive"? But it isn't. And that's what makes it funny.

Don't be a Pepper

Remember the good old days, when the adorable David Naughton urged us to join him in being a Pepper?



Times have changed, and with over 14 million Americans out of work, many of them men who now wonder if they will ever work again, and if they don't, just who they are, concern about masculinity is at an all-time high. Enter Dr. Pepper, with a 10-calorie drink that they're marketing specifically to men, because 0-calorie questionable-tasting soft drinks sweetened with poison just aren't macho enough for them. No more wussy-ass song and dance guys who looked like the cast of Glee long before Glee was even a gleam in Fox's eye. No, in the new Land of Pepper, ten calories = one penis:


But this ad isn't the worst of it. The worst is the "10 Man-Ments" that are part of the ad campaign. Apparently you have to "Like" it on Facebook to get to it, so we'll let Chicagoist reveal it for you.

The intrepid Amanda ventured into the fetid swamp of male anxiety so you don't have to:

Obviously, Dr. Pepper rolled out this campaign before there was a mass shooting that left 8 dead, in which the murderer was apparently motivated to get revenge on his ex-wife over not getting his way in a custody battle. But if they'd done a little market research, they would have been able to predict the reaction from the very same misogynists they hope will buy up their soda. David Futrelle gathered some at Man Boobz. The theme of the comments he collected was, "Children are the property of men who create them all by themselves by ejacualating into incubators we call "women", and when you're done with your incubator, she shouldn't be able to get custody over your child-property, no matter what a judge says. And anyone who disagrees only has themselves to blame if they get shot in the face."  A sample:

E]nough of this type of offensive action might just start making women and their supporters* think twice, especially if they also become targets. (* Divorce attorneys, child services workers and counselors, family court judges, and other enabling cogs in the feminist legal system)......

Essentially men need to tell feminism to shut the fuck up, give it a vigorous slap across the face thus reminding it who is the biological superior, then order it back into the kitchen/bedroom.......

What options other than overt acts of physical violence are there for a man to deal with a shrew ex and corrupt family court system?....

Most men will just lay down and be resigned to the state-enforced kidnapping and extortion plot, but some are made of tougher stuff and for you to whine about this dead ex-wife or that is inconsequential and no loss to humanity.

I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened.

In case you were wondering what's going on in the mind of the Tea Party male who's blaming everyone else for his troubles, there you go.

I'm quite sure that when the "creative" and the account guys at Deutsch, Inc. (the ad agency that perpetrated this monstrosity) got together in a room, they imagined themselves to be Don and Pete and Roger and Kenny and Paul in the halcyon days before that kiljoy Peggy got all uppity on them. It would not surprise me if the Mad Men ethos permeates today's ad agencies, as the denizens therein, many of them not around during those days when ad guys, not finance guys, were the masters of the universe, try to capture those long-lost times.

If the name "Deutsch" sounds familiar to you, it's because yes, it's THAT Deutsch -- Donny Deutsch, most familiar to political junkies as the guy on Morning Schmoe who obviously gets up in the morning and thinks that because he looks a little bit like Jon Stewart, if he just combs his hair the same way people will think he IS Jon Stewart. Here's a classic Donny Deutsch moment, which tells you everything you need to know about him:



That's just what Occupy Wall Street needs -- for a bunch of kids to get killed. Yeah, that's the ticket. you can't BUY that kind of publicity. Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone who in this day and age creates an ad that's nothing more than a retooling of this:

Why we are the way we are

Because we cut our teeth on TV commercials like this one:

That's one twisted ad. Stan Freberg did some of the most demented TV commercials of the late 1950's and early 1960's. I know this is usually DCap's territory, but I'm treading on it today.

Here's another one:

And more:

We come by our snark naturally.

This made me all blubbery, but it's still one guy in one car

You've got to love this ad (including what you can generate with a computer now, though most of the outside-of-habitat footage was done with a real bear). But while the image of a polar bear hugging a human in thanks is a powerful and compelling one, individuals tootling around in even electric or hybrid cars is not the answer. A commitment to better and more convenient mass transit is -- and given what we're seeing out of Republican governors, we're not going to get it.

Insert your own snark here

They're dropping like flies....I'm sorry the man is dead, but I was tired of getting yelled at by a commercial pitchman all the time:

Tampa police say Billy Mays, the television pitchman known for his boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died. He was 50.

Authorities say Mays was pronounced dead Sunday morning after being found by his wife at home. There were no signs of a break-in, and investigators do not suspect foul play. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by Monday afternoon.

Mays' wife, Deborah Mays, says the family doesn't expect to make any public statements and asked for privacy.

If there's an afterlife, I hope the TVs have fast-forward through the commercials.

Everybody wants a piece of Obamamania

I'm not sure it's an accident that the new Pepsi logo is strongly evocative of the Obama campaign logo. And now, in what would otherwise be a Super Bowl ad, Pepsi has, in one of the best TV spots I've seen in a long time, linked its long history to the theme of "generations" -- just in time for the inauguration:

I just love this ad. It's fantastic on so many levels, few of them having to do with promoting a cola drink. I love its theme of continuity; the way it points out that every generation is a product of its time, and the way it recognizes that generations who are old now, or whom are long dead, had their time in the sun, and the opportunity to have an impact on the world. Of course they conveniently left out the 1930's, and PepsiCo wants to show that all of them drank Pepsi, but there's a kind of profundity in this fun minute of advertising that we rarely see in product promotion these days.

Best. Dotcom. Ad. Ever.

I just saw this ad on MSNBC, and couldn't tell if it was a funny segment in their election coverage or for real. It's for real:

Hilarious. Scatological as hell, but hilarious.

Obama's media people are freakin' brilliant

It's "out of the box" thinking at it's best. First it was leasing a channel on Dish Network to stream a half-hour campaign ad (and if you are watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and an Obama ad comes on, a graphic comes up telling you that if you hit the "Select" button on your remote, you can watch the ad). Now it's advertising in an XBox 360 game:

Last week we noted unconfirmed sightings of an “Obama for President” billboard in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise. Today we’re able to report that it is, in fact, an official advertisement placed by the senator’s campaign team.

The question now is whether the young voters will show up to put him over the top. I'm betting that they will. I think they realize that their entire future is at stake.

Wow...and they said Obama had a God complex...

Actual ad seen at the Big Blue Smurf:



Granted, this is a poll and not produced by the McCain campaign, but someone out there sure likes this notion.

Soon to be seen drinking beer with the Dell Guy

Remember the Dell Guy? "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell"? He ended up getting busted in 2003 for buying pot and that was the end of his career. As of last November, the Dell Dude, a.k.a. Ben Curtis, was seen waiting tables at Tortilla Flats in New York, consigned to that particular media hell that awaits yesterday's TV commercial phenoms. I imagine there's a bar somewhere -- perhaps even Tortilla Flats -- where all those people sit around and swap stories about the Good Old Days. Picture Dell Dude swapping stories with Mr. Whipple and the Maytag Repairman, before both of them died. Or if he were doing mushrooms, perhaps he's knocking back a few mojitos with Speedy Alka-Seltzer, the Trix Rabbit, Markie Maypo, Bert & Harry Piel, Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

But he shouldn't feel too bad, because with any luck at all, he'll have a new companion soon -- FreeCreditReport.com Guy.

You know the ads I'm talking about; they are ubiquitous. It's this sort-of-cute guy with tousled blonde curls singing with an utterly deadpan expression about the horrors that identify theft have brought upon his life. Come on, admit it: You've gotten out of bed on more than one morning with the song he sings in the pirate costume stuck in your head all day -- right down to the accompaniment on the spoons. You hate those ads, but they stick with you. Those songs lodge in your head and won't let go.

Most of these are just funny, but occasionally they veer off into offensiveness, like the one Melissa discussed last fall, in which Credit Card Boy is perfect while his new bride thinks she's Imelda Marcos.

You hate FreeCreditReport.com guy too, don't you. You can't wait for him to go away. I know I can't. Except that for now, he's the hottest thing in American advertising, star of his own 30-second sitcom in which he experiences different misadventures all the time, as a result of his not signing up for a paid service that you can get for free.

Of course it turns out that this guy is just about as ersatz as the company for which he shills. It's not his voice in the ads. Turns out he's, of all things, French-Canadian. There's some kind of Bushonomics joke in there somewhere, but I don't have time to go looking for it. All I know is that I can't wait till the day this tousled troubador is seen drowning his sorrows with Dell Dude over some ersatz Tex-Mex at Chevy's.

Best. Ad. Ever.

This is almost enough to make me go back to Honda from Toyota next time I buy a car:

More on this ad at Group News Blog.