Slate eBook Club
January 2004

The Mystery of the Dell Dude Rob Walker
Xbox and the Meaning of Life Rob Walker
The Ad-Friendly World of Minority Report Rob Walker
A New Vein for Viagra Rob Walker
The Recycled Mascot Rob Walker
I Like Spike Rob Walker
Verizon's Vicious Ferret Rob Walker
Gramps in Space Rob Walker
The Lighter Side of Spam Rob Walker
Freed by the Beetle Rob Walker
Pain Relief Rob Walker
Show Us Your Tats Rob Walker
The Beast Under Your Toenail Rob Walker
What's Up, Chucks? Rob Walker
Suckling Sucks Rob Walker
Chicken-Fried Bull Rob Walker
Your Cheatin' Cart Seth Stevenson



The Mystery of the Dell Dude
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, June 3, 2002, at 10:30 AM PT

For a long time now, I've avoided the Dell Dude. People have been writing to me about him from the beginning—the spot in which "Steven" videotapes an appeal to his parents for a Dell PC. I saw it many times, of course, but I couldn't think what there would be to say about it: It seemed so low rent, so temporary. But the ads kept coming, and soon it was clear that Steven was a phenomenon. The Wall Street Journal ran a story on how the series had "made a celebrity" of the actor who plays Steven and that his catch phrase, "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell," had become "a kind of all-purpose 'Good Job!' for slackers." That same week, Michael Musto threw in a reference in his Village Voice column: "How cute is that Dell elf, huh?" Still, I figured the thing would run its course, but no, Steven is still with us, appearing recently in what various fan sites (!) say is his 11^th spot. You can see that and another recent Steven ad via the Ads.com Web site.

The "Dude in Car" ad: Steven is out driving in a convertible with a young lady. (Take note, Mr. Musto.) He meets up by chance with a neighbor who is out computer shopping and flummoxed at the choices. Steven replies with the twitchy, goofball ebullience that is his trademark: "Your computer quandary is easily solved by the folks at Dell," he says, delivering these words as if he might burst out laughing, or perhaps wet his pants, at any moment. "Just call or go online. They'll help you figure it out." His date looks charmed by Steven's mastery of Dell's marketing pitch, and the neighbor announces that he feels better already. Then he frowns: "Uh, Steven, isn't this your father's car?" The young date slides Steven a glance, as he gives the neighbor a sort of pleading, don't-blow-it-for-me look and says, "Uh, noooo." We cut away to some product specs, then back to Steven and his date, who kittenishly asks, "You're gonna say it, aren't you?" And as they drive away to watch the submarine races or whatever, we see the bumper sticker: "Dude, You're Gettin' a Dell."

The "Carpe Dimension" ad: Here we are at graduation, where Steven, improbably enough, is addressing his classmates. "Today we are asking ourselves a lot of questions," he says, stiltedly. "Questions like, 'Where will I go from here?' " (He clicks through a slide presentation, showing Steven looking out into the distance.) "What do I need to get there?" (A slide shows Steven stroking his chin.) The principal looks over at him suspiciously, but of course Steven is too stoked by the moment to notice. "As we look to the future, there are answers!" He tilts his hands forward in a classic dude gesture and says, "The folks at Dell have them!" He gives a quick sales pitch and winds up with a shout of "Carpe Dimension! Seize the Dell!" We get some specs on the Dell Dimension PC. Steven reveals that the top of his graduation hat has the company slogan on it.

What's with this dude? The question isn't whether Steven is an advertising success, but why. Although he's occasionally identified as a "surfer," I think it's pretty obvious that it's more the "stoner" cliché that he's riding: Like ur-dude Jeff Spicoli, he seems lost in a strange haze that makes him oblivious to certain social conventions and has marred his ability to communicate. But Steven is off drugs and high on Dell—he takes hit after hit of the PC maker's excellent features and services until he's totally wasted, all consumer-blissed out. And unlike some other drugs, this narcotic leaves him neither sluggish nor dangerous—he's just cuddly and sweet and licensed to shill. Unlike Stuart, the obnoxious young pitchman for Ameritrade, Steven is not a threat. He'll uplift his classmates and probably won't do anything more untoward with the girl next door than try to sell her a laptop. Sure, Steven is amusing in a Dumb and Dumber kind of way, but perhaps it's that harmless, almost naive innocence that drives us all wild.

Still, we're all bound to get sick of him at some point. Apparently the actor, Benjamin Curtis, has ambitions as a serious actor, hopes he won't be forever typecast as the goofy Dellster, and wants to make a name for himself in indie films. Good luck, dude.



Xbox and the Meaning of Life
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, June 10, 2002, at 9:07 AM PT

Although we usually stick with U.S. commercials here at the Ad Report Card, an exception will be made today for a spot that was running recently in the United Kingdom—until it was banned. The ad is for the Xbox gaming console, and you can see it here (using QuickTime), via the Web site of 'Boards magazine. (Thanks to reader Westley Annis for alerting me of this.)

The ad: It begins in a delivery room, where a screaming mom is delivering a screaming baby. The baby literally rockets out of her body and through a window, still screaming. The baby is shown hurtling through the stratosphere at a terrific speed. As it zooms across the skies, it slowly transforms into a little boy. Soon he begins screaming again, eyes wide with fear, as he arcs across the skies. He continues to age—into a young man, an adult. (He's still naked, so his hands find their way to a television-friendly position.) He screams and screams. He loses his hair; wrinkles develop, and his teeth yellow. He's old. His scream fades to a croaking groan. Finally, he slams into a grave in a leaf-strewn cemetery. The image dissolves to black and the following words appear in sequence: "Life Is Short." "Play More." "Xbox."

The controversy: This rather startling ad did at least part of what it was intended to do, which was get attention. According to the BBC, 136 complaints about it were registered with the United Kingdom's Independent Television Commission. Twenty of these viewers were bothered because they'd recently lost a loved one; another was a pregnant woman. Most of the rest were simply offended. The spot was promptly pulled. The ITC commented, "The final scene of a body smashing into its grave was unnecessary and had caused considerable distress to many viewers."

The message: I happen to think this ad is fantastic, but probably not for the reasons that Xbox-maker Microsoft (which also owns Slate) intended. Sure, the spot follows the overworn path toward "edginess," and sure, like most others that resort to this tactic it ends up crossing over to crass. But I think those British viewers are wrong (and silly) to be offended because this ad is beyond crass. It's so crass it's profound.

Really, have you ever seen a more harrowing summation of human life? Not only is our time on Earth an ephemeral flare, an awful trajectory along which we are blasted, naked and screaming all the while; not only is its climax sudden and meaningless—but there's nothing you can do about it! Listen up, kids, there's no escape from the cruel joke of your own mortality, so stop trying and play some video games, all right? Your supposed individuality is absurd; don't waste your time punching at the darkness; everything that matters is outside of your control. However, there is a product to take your mind off all this. Resistance is pointless. So buy some video games. Because the truth is that you are dying right now. The ad may be the most thundering and concise argument for the futility of existence since Kafka's "Give It Up."

Microsoft apparently issued a response to the U.K. ban asserting that the ad makes a "positive statement about life," a claim that also has a funny-but-chilling Kafka-esque ring to it. At first I thought that whoever said or wrote this must have struggled to keep from laughing, but on reflection maybe it was all he or she could do to keep from bursting into sobs. If this ad is a positive statement about life, then how scary would a negative one be? Oh, don't answer. Just buy me an Xbox, and we'll leave it at that.



The Ad-Friendly World of Minority Report
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, June 24, 2002, at 12:53 PM PT

One of the first things we see in the new film Minority Report is an ad—a fake political spot touting benefits of the futuristic new form of crime-fighting around which the plot revolves. (Read the review by Slate's David Edelstein for more on this and a spot-on assessment of the actual film.) But most of the marketing messages in this story, set in 2054, push things that aren't science fiction at all: the Gap, Aquafina, American Express. The movie is awash in advertising. And while product placement isn't new, Minority Report pushes it into new territory. Among other things, some of the commercials that flit by were actually produced as fully realized spots by an actual agency, according to trade journal Advertising Age, which has posted three such "ads" on its Web site (you'll need the RealPlayer plug-in to see them).

The ads: The spot that's most noticeable in the movie is also the shortest. It's for Revo sunglasses. Against a techno-ish soundtrack, a crowd of sleek, white, alien-looking figures is shown. Through their midst strides one figure who stands out—because only she (I think it's a she) is wearing shades. Revo shades. This image conspicuously hovers in the background during a chase scene.

Reebok's logo sprints by in another chase scene (there's a lot of chasing in Minority Report), and fittingly the full ad shows a futuristic race. A bunch of unitard-wearing sprinters line up in a videogame-like setting and dash for the finish line while high-octane dance music blares. The spot ends with the exhortation: "Download now," perhaps implying that in the future even our shoes will be made of 1s and 0s. (It's also one of the things that makes it unlikely that this ad in particular could have a life outside the film.)

A Pepsi ad shows a woman in a wispy dress, water dancing in what I guess might be an ocean of Pepsi. This time the backbeats have an Indian flavor.

Better than the real thing? All these ads are pretty ambitious, so maybe the most surprising thing to point out is that none are really a focal point in the film. I'm not even sure that Pepsi ad was really in the movie at all—I did notice a Pepsi poster at one point, but if any images from this spot were in the movie, I managed to miss them. That may be because the number of brand messages in Minority Report is almost overwhelming, and the most memorable ones were those that took the most surprising form: Interactive billboards that identify passersby through eye-scans and shout personalized messages, a Gap hologram blurting the specifics of your last purchase and asking how it worked out, a cereal box whose characters rattle to life, etc. Compared to this sort of thing, a plain old ad, no matter how futuristic looking, just can't compete.

Most viewers will probably shudder at the thought of enduring a world even more ad-soaked than the one we live in already, one where the pitches on every available service shout not just figuratively but literally, with a personalized precision that quietly brushes away the last shreds of our privacy. At first glance, there's something almost cautionary in director Steven Spielberg's riffs of the future of marketing.

On the other hand, the filmmakers seem to have few qualms about marketing in the here and now. "Besides edge-of-your-seat action, the summer sci-fi event will also feature the hottest Lexus models … of 2054," notes a special cross-branding section of the Lexus Web site. In Europe and elsewhere, "Minority Report themed digital services will be available from Club Nokia, Nokia's online community and loyalty program," a press release from the cell-phone company promises. And so on and so forth: There honestly isn't space to recount all the examples of how marketing and art come together in this film. Other creative voices, from filmmaker Paul Verhoeven to writer George Saunders, have wickedly satirized advertising and where its voracious ambitions might lead. But here, in a weird way, the familiar product names may in fact be intended to serve almost as reassuring guideposts: Minority Report is set in a version of the future that is disturbing in some ways and entrancing in others, but it seems that whatever wild twists the future may hold, the one thing we can all be sure of is that it will turn out to be a brand-friendly place.



A New Vein for Viagra
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Aug. 12, 2002, at 7:54 AM PT

In advertising, it's taken as a given that sex sells. And yet it seems that products that are specifically designed as sex enablers—like Viagra—generally tread a more careful path when acting on this idea than do, say, beer-makers. The more directly a product is tied to sex, the trickier it is to use sex as part of the sales job. Still, such advertisers don't exactly avoid the subject altogether. To see what this means in practice, consider two recent spots: one for Viagra (see it here, via Ads.com) and one for something called Enzyte (see it here, also through Ads.com).

The Viagra ad: Joe arrives for work. Immediately, a colleague in the lobby asks him, "New haircut?" No. As he passes through the office, everyone tries to figure out what's different about Joe. New shoes? Been working out? Shave your mustache? No, no, no. What's different, an announcer eventually reveals, is that Joe "finally asked his doctor about Viagra." As Joe strides out to the parking lot at the end of the day, he laughs joyously into his cell phone. Perhaps he's going home to enjoy some nice, refreshing sex. And that's what's different about Joe.

The Enzyte ad: This spot starts out with an absurdly smiling man, a prototypical square, beaming as he hoists a yellow mug of coffee in his bright kitchen. The background music is chipper whistling. An overly cheerful announcer says: "This is Bob. Bob is doing well. Very well indeed." Bob's zombielike smile persists as he heads to the office. "That's because not long ago, with just a quick phone call, and a free brochure"—we see Bob taking a break from his day of smiling like an idiot to read a brochure—"Bob realized he could have something better in his life." Again we contemplate Bob's big old grin. "And what did he get? Why, not only a big boost in confidence," the announcer continues, sounding for all the world like a parody of a 1950s training film, "a little more self-esteem, and a very big promotion." Bob is heading back home again, past a neighbor wielding a somewhat limp hose. "He got the very thing that makes a man really successful." Now the neighbor's hose goes totally flaccid. Bob opens the door to his beaming wife. "A very happy Mrs. at home." The announcer then suggests that if you're interested in learning more about "natural male enhancement," here's a number to call for a brochure, etc.

No joke? Both ads are jokey, and the Viagra one is fairly clever in teasing the viewer along to the payoff. It pursues a strategy that's easy to understand—attempting to remove any stigma from the use of Viagra, while underscoring that no one will know you use it.

The Enzyte ad is harder to figure out. It comes across like a big sendup of sex-aid products in general, as if the real goal is for the viewer to laugh at the whole idea of something like a "natural male enhancer." Watching this ad, you keep waiting for the Energizer Bunny to show up, revealing that everything you've seen up to now was just a ruse. But apparently it's not. So why satirize the very thing you're selling? You'd think the condition that would lead someone to consider a product like this would not leave him in a particular mood for laughter. The best rationale I can think of is that Enzyte wants to use humor partly to make the whole subject easier to think about, and partly to distance itself from the transparently fake sobriety that peddlers of quackery tend to rely on.

Yet Enzyte itself seems to fall into one of the flakier segments of this category—the vaguely scientific-sounding pill that supposedly works wonders, in ways that are never clearly defined. A related Web site has that pseudo-serious look to it, as if Enzyte, like Viagra, were a prescription drug, which it isn't. Viagra is made by Pfizer, a venerable pharmaceutical company that makes a range of FDA-approved products. Enzyte is a dietary supplement made by something called Lifekey Healthcare, whose only other product, so far as I could tell, was an earlier "male enhancer" with a different name. After the product's name there's even a parenthetical phrase, "suffragium asotus," which sounds like it might be the scientific name for the active ingredient in Enzyte or possibly the name of a plant since Enzyte is supposed to be an "herbal" product. (From what I've read, neither the scientific nor herbalist communities have much nice to say about Enzyte.) But in fact "suffragium asotus" appears to be Latin—if slightly mangled and not quite grammatical Latin—for something like "sensual assistance." All of which suggests that the makers of Enzyte are perfectly serious about selling their product—but that even they must think there's something funny about the idea that anyone would buy it.



The Recycled Mascot
Why is the Taco Bell Chihuahua selling car insurance?
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Aug. 26, 2002, at 7:55 AM PT

What becomes of old advertising mascots? I don't mean the ones that flopped, like reviled Domino's pitch-muppet Bad Andy, but the ones that were popular—maybe even more popular than the companies they were meant to represent. Lately, such mascots have actually been able to find new work. The famous Taco Bell Chihuahua has been shilling for Geico insurance, and more recently the Pets.com sock puppet has re-emerged on behalf of Bar None, which provides financing to people who have had trouble getting a car loan. See the Geico spot via Ads.com (using Windows Media or the RealPlayer) and the Bar None ads here and here, through Bar None's site (using QuickTime).

The Geico ad: A bunch of people gathered in a waiting room practice delivering lines about Geico ("Geico has great service," etc.)—they're all here to audition for the job of commercial spokesperson. The audition overseer calls out, "Next, please!" Strolling through the crowd is the Taco Bell Chihuahua, famously booted from the chain's advertising despite his apparent popularity and thus presumably looking for a new gig. Then the Chihuahua spots a lizard—the lizard who appears in lots of Geico ads, which often turn on gecko/Geico jokes. "Well, hello," the gecko says in a chipper English accent. "Oh great," the dog mutters. "A talking gecko." The spot closes with a quick and perfunctory pitch for Geico car insurance.

The Bar None ads: In the first spot, we see a brief snippet of the sock puppet riding along with, it seems, a Pets.com delivery man; the shot is framed by a bubble. "I used to be top dog," the puppet says—and then there's a pop sound. Now the puppet is in a car lot, telling us that Bar None "gave me a second chance." He goes on to explain how Bar None can help people with even the spottiest credit records finance a car because "you deserve a second chance, too." In a follow-up commercial, the puppet accosts two people (a couple?) at a bus stop. After flirting with the woman, he fills them both in on how to get car loans despite their bad credit. The guy immediately dials the number and is approved. "Scintillating," the puppet says, in a mild burst of somewhat inexplicable sarcasm, before the spot closes on a reiteration of its basic pitch.

Happy returns? It may seem odd to link a brand to an icon of somebody else's brand, but in each of these cases it actually works. (And of course you can't just grab someone else's icon willy-nilly: Both Geico and Bar None went through the necessary hoops to secure rights and permissions.) Both campaigns certainly make more sense than, say, the decision by one of those cheapo long distance companies to use ALF, the sitcom-star muppet of days gone by, as a public representative. (See him in action here, mysteriously paired with all-American chart-topper Toby Keith, through Ads.com.)

Since the Taco Bell dog was almost spookily popular for a while a few years back—there were T-shirts, fan sites, the whole bit—Geico was wise to work him into a campaign whose unifying theme is goofy-twist jokes: People who know and love the dog might snap out of their stupor long enough to see what company has re-employed him, however briefly.

The Pets.com puppet was an obsession of mine for several months—when the company was still in business and then when it wasn't. Readers at the time pointed to precedents for spokesthings outliving the products they touted, and their observations have proved prescient. (Also surviving, so far as I know, is the Conan O'Brien parody, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.) I'm pretty sure the voice of the current Pets.com puppet is not the original, and the new version is far less smart-alecky, which I gather was the "charm" of the Pets.com spots. But still, even a halfhearted reincarnation still works pretty well in a series of ads on the theme of second chances. My only nagging doubt is that now when I look at the ads, I always find myself thinking of ALF and wondering: Come on, does everyone deserve a second chance?



I Like Spike
The Spike Jonze ad that almost makes IKEA cool.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Sept. 23, 2002, at 9:16 AM PT

Like most ad-watchers in the real world, I'm generally not that interested in who directed a particular commercial. But one director whose commercial work does interest me is Spike Jonze. Jonze has made his mark with justly celebrated music videos (like Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice," starring Christopher Walken), as the director of Being John Malkovich, and even as an actor in Three Kings. But he still does ads, including one of my favorite commercials in recent memory, a Levi's spot that I wrote about two years ago. The point is, when I heard that Jonze was doing an ad for IKEA, I was interested—and I was not let down. Because I'll essentially be ruining the ad for you in writing about it, I encourage you to take a look before going further: To see the spot, go to www.unboring.com (if you're at work, mute your computer; the site comes up with music) and click on the picture of the TV set.

The ad: In its online version, at least, it's a pretty long spot. A woman in a rather IKEA-looking apartment unplugs a little red lamp. She hauls it outside, where the weather is windy and wintry, and leaves it on the sidewalk, with the trash, as pitiful music plays. The lamp looks oddly human. As it starts to rain, the lamp seems sad and pitiful, particularly because we can see the woman in her warm apartment above, enjoying the company of a new lamp. This goes on for a while. Eventually you want to weep. Right then a man appears out of the darkness and addresses the camera in a silly-sounding Nordic accent. "Many of you feel bad for this lamp," he says, as the rain soaks him. "That is because you're crazy. It has no feelings! And the new one is much better." He departs. The ad ends with the IKEA logo.

Style counsel: Once again, Jonze has crafted something that stands out. As with many good ads, you'd want to watch it even if it weren't an ad at all. It looks great, it draws you in and creates a certain suspense from the beginning, and it ends with a surprise that's both funny and vaguely unnerving.

But it is an ad. And to its credit, it achieves its effect without simply ignoring the thing that's being advertised (a surprisingly common strategy). Without that brand-new IKEA lamp shining in the window, the little narrative would fail; so you can't help but focus on the merchandise, even if you're not exactly sure why you're doing it. More broadly, IKEA seems to be trying to attach itself to the notion of non-boringness (or "unböring," as the one-word, complete-with-goofy-umlaut slogan has it), and certainly the feel of the spot helps: IKEA comes across as almost avant-garde.

The one questionable element of the ad is the amount of attention focused on the red lamp being discarded. The lamp works just fine and looks like a perfectly decent lamp. Trashing it is an act of pure and conspicuous waste, which we are prodded to laugh off as we embrace the idea that waste is not just OK but flat-out cool if the new thing is "better." Period. You could argue that IKEA thus associates itself not just with the useless cluttering of landfill, but with a certain slavery to trend-following.

Then again, the actual spot is so loopy that it seems misguided to subject it to such a weighty charge. And let's face it, the target here, the likely IKEA customers, couldn't care less about being tagged conspicuous consumers. In a funny way, that strange man in the rain is saying exactly what they wished someone would say—they just didn't know it until they heard the words. Where Jonze himself might come down on that subject is impossible to say, but his feel for his audience seems just about pitch-perfect. And in advertising, that's what counts.



Verizon's Vicious Ferret
Can a nasty varmint sell you phone services?
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Nov. 11, 2002, at 7:22 AM PT

Everybody knows that sex sells, but what about violence? It may sound counterintuitive to associate a product or service with physical pain in the course of a pitch, but in the age of Jackass: The Movie and Fear Factor, getting a kick out of other people's physical discomfort is hardly a taboo. Particularly if there's something kinda funny about it. This theory has beaten its way into the marketing mainstream and is on display in a couple of recent TV spots: one for Verizon mobile messaging (see it here, via Ads.com) and one for the Sony PlayStation (see it here).

The Verizon ad: So there's this guy sitting at home, taunting his ferret. (A scenario we can all identify with, right?) Suddenly the ferret leaps at his head and latches onto his tongue. The guy reels around in agony, but is able to use Verizon text messaging to call for help.

Bite this. We've seen "ouch ads" before, of course, but you can't deny that there's something Jackass-esque (Jackassian?) about a man with a ferret on his tongue. That's gotta hurt! Anyway, the ad is obviously meant to be funny, and it is. A vicious ferret is sure to get the viewer's attention, and the violence of the moment is defanged, so to speak, by its absurdity. Maybe you wince, but surely you grin. And as it happens the gag actually works to underscore an actual product feature: Maybe you won't need text messaging for precisely the same reason this guy does, but you probably come away from the ad knowing what its makers are trying to sell you. Of course, you might also come away associating Verizon with agony. But again, remember the lesson of Jackass: Agony sells.

The PlayStation ad: The setting is a self-defense class for women, centered on a male "assailant" in a padded, protective suit. An instructor barks at the women to get over their inhibitions and "attack" him, exhorting them to yell, "I am not a victim!" But this empowerment lesson quickly gets out of hand. Within seconds the ladies are really beating the hell out of padded-suit guy. He sinks to the floor mat with a look of desperation and fear in his eyes. He struggles up to face them again, and a special effect sweeps across his tormenters, "marking" each with a little shimmer of light. At this point the action shifts to a scene from a PlayStation game, The Mark of Kri, where a brawny hero similarly takes on a vicious gang of baddies, and a voice-over explains that that the game allows you to "mark your opponents." The hero smashes and kicks his enemies, presumably to death. And we switch back to padded-suit guy. The ladies are now scattered about like so many bowling pins, except for one, whom he smacks to the floor with a backhand to the face.

No defense? If you're selling a video game that's all about raucous beat-downs, then of course the related advertising will revel in raucous beat-downs. This is much less surprising than using pain to sell a wireless service. On the other hand, the direction this ad goes in is pretty disturbing. Not only do we get a self-defense expert beating up his class, but the commercial actually plays violence against women for laughs. Even by the standards of gaming ads, that's a pretty surprising gambit. Unfortunately, I suspect the number of PlayStation fans who will be offended is probably pretty small. And advertising is all about knowing the sensibility of the target jackass—I mean, customer.



Gramps in Space
Sony's new old strategy.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Nov. 18, 2002, at 3:37 PM PT

Although challenged from time to time, it remains an article of faith among many advertisers that younger consumers are more important than older ones. The result is that, apart from drug companies and some carmakers, hardly any advertiser makes an explicit pitch to potential customers over age 50. Skeptics have long argued that shifting demographics make this a shortsighted strategy that must inevitably change, and now we have a bit of evidence that someone is listening: a new spot from Sony that squarely targets the 50-plus consumer.

The ad. An older man relaxes by the water, listening to Russian lessons on his portable Sony audio device. Then he's shown packing his bags (with lots more Sony gadgets, among other things) and checking the weather in Moscow on his Sony laptop. The background music is a cover of the Crosby Stills Nash & Young song "Carry On," performed by Alana Davis. There's a quick series of images of the man's trip to Russia, past a security check point and into … a rocket. He's doing the Lance Bass thing! And indeed, there's Gramps in space, pointing his Sony video camera back toward the shimmering blue Earth. He looks very happy. Titles appear on the screen: "When your kids ask where the money went … show them the tape." Damn, he looks happy.

Rewind. Now, a couple of obvious reactions spring to mind. Since such trips are said to cost around $20 million, the ad appears to be targeting a subset of the older-consumer group, the always-elusive zillionaire market. (For what it's worth, a Sony backgrounder on the campaign reveals that the fictional man "liquidated his assets" to make this journey.) The second reaction is to imagine what the "kids" might say about "the tape"—possibly something along the lines of, "Yeah, that's great, Dad, but you know, I've seen video images of the earth from space before. Thanks for nothing."

Zoom in. But let's set aside those knee-jerk, and possibly unfair, responses. What Sony says it is focused on here is a category of people called "zoomers," a U.S. News & World Report coinage. Basically these are our old friends the baby boomers, who are hitting their middle-50s and will soon "rewrite what it means to be a senior citizen." A second Sony ad will go a little softer on what meaningful senior citizenship might cost, featuring a woman "in her late 50s" entering a steel cage from which to observe sharks up close. (That spot also ends with the line about brushing aside "Where did the money go?" with "the tape.") The overriding theme—a reasonable and arguably even admirable one—is that, America's youth-obsession aside, life still has much to offer to those who have graduated from the hottest demos.

Often the most effective ads are those that don't so much try to convince their audience as confirm what their audience already, perhaps secretly, wanted to do, think, or believe. Could there be anything easier than getting boomers to buy into the idea of spending money for their personal fulfillment? Yes: Getting them to believe that doing so is not only not selfish—it's a an act of great cultural and societal import.

Anyway, this is a good-looking and well-paced ad that's likely to please its target audience—and annoy everyone else. And that seems to be part of the idea: pleasing the target audience, in part by annoying everyone else. At first glance it might seem that Sony wants older consumers to appropriate the in-your-face attitude of youth by effectively taunting younger generations with a variation on the familiar "I'm spending your inheritance" theme. But really, the message is more of a reminder to Junior that the people now called zoomers aren't stealing that attitude—they invented it.



The Lighter Side of Spam
Finding a funny bone in canned meat.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Dec. 9, 2002, at 11:31 AM PT

Spam, the luncheon meat in a can, has what you might call a challenged brand. The challenge isn't that people haven't heard of Spam—pretty much everyone is familiar with the stuff, which was introduced by Hormel back in 1937. According to a history at SPAM.com, the name is a mushing-together of "spiced ham" and was born of a contest with a $100 prize. Perhaps a meat product that is scrambled and pummeled by industrial processes into a brazenly inorganic geometric shape once seemed futuristic and exciting. But like a lot of things that once seemed futuristic and exciting, Spam now seems funny and maybe a little creepy. You can't help but imagine a big vat of, I don't know, whipped pig, being poured into those cans. It doesn't make you think of ham, it makes you think of Soylent Green. (And as if all this weren't enough, "spam" has of course become the noun referring to e-junk-mail, one of the most annoying aspects of the online age.) To be blunt, the Spam brand lives mostly as a punch line, and the challenge is that everyone has heard of it.

I hasten to add that I am not attacking the quality of Spam, which I'm sure is first-rate. It's just that I've never had the guts to try it, for reasons suggested above. And if the Web site is any indication, the masters of the Spam brand are perfectly aware of its rep and even have a sense of humor about it. The history cited earlier begins, "Bread lines, Dust Bowls, Bonnie and Clyde, New Deals and plenty of raw deals, the '30s were tough. Yet conditions like that gave rise to heroes"—such as Spam. But elsewhere the site notes that more than 5 billion cans of the stuff have been purchased (and I guess consumed) over the decades, so Spam is not simply a laughing matter.

That's why Spam's new advertising campaign is, at first glance anyway, a little bewildering. The background material from its ad agency (BBDO Minneapolis) is surprisingly straightforward in describing the mission—to revitalize a "high-volume, profitable icon brand that's starting to decline." The theme of the campaign, anchored by two TV spots, is articulated in the tag line "Crazy Tasty."

One ad is set in a brightly colored suburban dining room that suggests a 1970s sitcom. Dad looks a little like Jim Carrey, which makes it hard not to think of The Truman Show. The adolescent son and daughter figures are drinking milk. The boy comments on the delicious mac-and-cheese dinner the family is enjoying. "That's because it's made with Spam," says Dad, who sort of leans across the table and delivers this insight with the conviction that suggests he is a man who might come unglued at any moment. He explains, through a clenched smile, how he made the dish sparkle by adding cubes of Spam. "Wow," says Mom, "I'd sure like some more—but there's none left!" Here, Dad seems to snap. His body stiffens, his brow furrows. He claps his hands and screams, "MORE SPAM!" A Spam van crashes through the wall, to the delight of everyone. "Mmm," the daughter says. "More Spam!" And then everyone laughs like a bunch of lunatics.

A second spot is set at a backyard barbecue. Not Necessarily Jim Carrey is on hand again, explaining to his neighbors, or whoever these people are, how he assembled the Spam-burgers they've been enjoying. Again there is a Spam shortage, and again his face briefly darkens before he summons another Spam van with an unhinged yell.

These ads are, frankly, unnerving. Which is probably why I like them. You might think it's a mistake to suggest that Spam's core constituency is suburban crazies who seem vaguely tortured behind their happy masks and might at any moment embark on some Cheeveresque journey across all the neighborhood's swimming pools in search of canned meat. Won't this make current Spam fans feel laughed at and betrayed?

I doubt it. I think it's actually fairly shrewd of Hormel to show a sense of humor about Spam—and the more twisted, the better. These ads never quite make fun of the, um, product. Besides, I would guess that even the most devoted addict recognizes that there's something sort of funny (peculiar and ha-ha) about it. The oddball humor of the ads makes Spam seem, if not exactly desirable, then at the very least harmless. In this case, that's very much a step in the right direction.



Freed by the Beetle
Volkswagen rescues a cubicle slave.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Jan. 6, 2003, at 8:25 AM PT

When the discriminating readers of the "Ad Report Card" kindly volunteer opinions that form a consensus about a given ad, the consensus is usually that the ad stinks. But lately I've been getting e-mail that pretty consistently praises an ad for the new VW Beetle Convertible. This sort of thing doesn't happen often, so the spot is worth a look—not least because I think the readers are right about it. You can see it here, via Volkswagen's Web site (click "See the commercial").

The ad depicts an endless series of more or less interchangeable days in the life of a young office worker. With lots of jump cuts and split screens, we see him waking up at 7:30, picking out a shirt and tie from his variations-on-a-theme wardrobe, riding an escalator in a big, anonymous office tower, pouring himself coffee, shuffling papers, loping through the cubicle jungle, staring out the window in an endless sea of nearly identical windows. Then the process starts over, again and again. The background music is a thoroughly upbeat number that sounds like some forgotten bit of British Invasion ephemera; it's actually an Electric Light Orchestra tune called "Mr. Blue Sky." There's one moment in the ad when our hero looks out his window and sees a pretty young woman—but something about the glass and space that divides them makes their look seem like little more than a daydream. Then he sees something else: A new VW Beetle Convertible wheeling out of the parking lot. The music hits an elegiac crest. The car pulls away and we look back at the young man: If there is hope for him, it seems, this car is it.

The spot's effectiveness is all in the rhythm and pacing—and it's quite effective. The kid is likable, so we're sort of rooting for him, but he seems trapped, somebody stuck in a huge transparent cage, looking for signs of life out there to latch onto. (The ad is titled "Bubble Boy.") That killer ride in the parking lot is his beacon of hope. Of course, he'll have to keep working to buy one, and on some level there's something depressing about a material object as the only source of meaning in life, but, hey, come on, that's the whole point of advertising.

Anyway, the soundtrack is a highlight for a couple of reasons. One is that the upbeat music both takes the edge off the grim scenes of climate-controlled cube life and suggests that something will happen to reveal the "blue sky" referred to in the lyrics. The other reason is the simple fact that it's a tune by, of all bands, ELO. This means that the music is neither an attempt to repurpose a countercultural anthem, nor an attempt to break a new act—the two most common tactics with pop music in commercials nowadays. Instead it gives new life to an old song by—let's face it—a band that most people think is a joke (if they think of ELO at all). The idea is that if there's anything cooler than being the sort of person who is first to discover a hip new band, it's being the sort of person who has the taste to find a gem that's hidden in plain sight.

One last point about this ad: Even today, a lot of commercials targeting or featuring young people seem to use a circa 1999 template—a new generation that rejects old work and spending paradigms and demands total freedom, etc. This ad goes the other direction, and faces the reality that, in the end, what a lot of young people have to do is, you know, get a job, and find solace in the form of a snappy convertible. Maybe some things never change.



Pain Relief
A refreshing arthritis-medicine ad starring Frankenstein's monster.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, April 28, 2003, at 7:29 AM PT

We are awash in drug ads these days—according to Ad Age, in 2001 Pfizer shelled out more than $2 billion on U.S. marketing alone. And yet there's a numbing familiarity to all those spots: They often seem so interchangeable that it's hard to remember which one is which. What, for example, does "the little purple pill" do again? I can't recall. I just know that a lot of serious and wise-looking mature adults seem pleased to have access to it.

Given how almost comically interchangeable such commercials have become, it's no surprise that someone would come out with a parody. What might be surprising is that a drug-maker has done it. The makers of an over-the-counter arthritis medication called Osteo Bi-Flex have a spot out that cleverly mocks the kind of ads made by … well, by companies like the makers of Osteo Bi-Flex. See the ad here, on their site.

The spot opens with a grainy old movie clip of Frankstein's monster, roaring and lumbering. "That was me," says a thoughtful and bemused voice, sounding much like the kind of reasonable grandpa we've seen in any number of drug ads, recalling his pre-medication days. But the speaker is, in fact, Frankstein's monster today, relaxing in his book-lined study. "Back then, my aching joints made it hard for me to get around," he explains. He goes on to spell out the benefits of Osteo Bi-Flex, as we see gently lit footage of him, a giant green man with bolts sticking out of his neck, doing the kinds of things Gramps does in these ads: He's doing yoga, he's playing the banjo for some children, he's gardening. (All that's missing is a moment of soft-shoe, à la Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein.) At one point, he's simply staring off reflectively into the middle distance, a shot that I think the FCC must mandate in all drug and medication ads. The spot ends with a straight product shot and a quick "Put some life back in your joints" pitch, then an image of the monster out in a field doing Tai Chi or something.

At first I wondered if this ad was some sort of hoax, but that seems not to be the case. What's impressive about it, though, is not just that it goes for a laugh, but that it does so with a subtlety that's unusual in gag ads these days—nobody gets tackled or bit in the face by a ferret. Such extreme humor can be extremely funny, but this spot benefits by not walloping the viewer with the punch line—it just sort of happens without drawing attention to itself, leaving you briefly wondering if what you're seeing is for real, some sort of mistake, or the result of one too many little purple pills on an empty stomach. It may look a little hokey to, say, the Sony PlayStation demographic, but they're probably not buying a lot of arthritis medicine anyway.

Actually, to suggest hokiness isn't quite right, since it implies that that's the only alternative to flat-out shock humor. In its own way, this ad actually does have a bit of an attitude, and that's probably a good move. As I've noted before, out there in ad-land, a lot of thought is being given to the notion of how best to target aging boomers. This spot splits the difference between treating them just like prior generations of mature consumers and treating them like Gen Y wannabes. That seems like a good approach. And if it doesn't catch on, the ad-maker can always edit in a clip of a ferret biting the monster's face.



Show Us Your Tats
Golden Palace's experiment in nude branding.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, June 23, 2003, at 9:03 AM PT

During the final round of the U.S. Open, a woman approached golfer Jim Furyk on the 11^th hole. She was topless. By any standard—and certainly by the standards of golf—this was an interesting development. But there's more. Written across the half-naked woman's back was a URL: www.GoldenPalace.com. The online casino was practicing marketing in the raw.

Is this a good idea? I don't mean public nudity; I mean public nudity as branding tactic. And I raise the question because this seems to be a core part of Golden Palace's current strategy. Earlier this month, another branded streaker flashed through the French Open. And last month the same guy, who apparently runs nude through public events on a regular basis, did so at the UEFA Cup soccer final in Seville, Spain, again sporting the Golden Palace address.

Earlier, Golden Palace had used the temporary tattoo gambit on boxers. A middleweight named Bernard Hopkins had one (until his sweat washed it away) in a bout against Felix Trinidad in September 2001. This sparked various wrangles between the casino and boxing authorities; later, ESPN threatened to fine boxers who carried the tats in fights the cable network televised. Golden Palace nevertheless paid a number of boxers to serve as human billboards over the course of the past year or so—including Danny Bonaduce and some other participants in a Fox "celebrity boxing" show—and claimed a surge in hits as a result.

The thinking on that strategy seems straightforward—it's a way of sneaking a brand mention in front of a broadcast audience by merely paying a fighter $10,000 or maybe $50,000, which is a lot less than a real ad would cost. But extending the campaign to streaking—whose whole history is intertwined with publicity-seeking—seems a little odd, given that one of the few things that's less likely to be broadcast on the evening news than a naked person is a naked person slathered with ads. And, indeed, even the print news stories I read about the streaker stunts scrupulously avoided mentioning GoldenPalace.com.

But I think the casino may have had an epiphany when it switched its human billboards from a pasty, paunchy bloke to a trim, blond hottie: The latter's picture lingered near the top of Yahoo!'s most-e-mailed page for much of last week. Golden Palace also posted its own page of risqué photos of the woman. I won't link to it, for various reasons, but the extremely popular Web site Fark did, drawing thousands of hits and a spirited discussion among more than 100 Farkers about the woman and whether or not she is actually a porn star, among other things.

None of which would mean much if the brand under discussion here didn't happen to be Web-based. For an Internet casino, getting in front of a lot of heavy Internet users is obviously not a bad thing, and the way it came about was probably a lot cheaper than, say, buying ad time during a golf tournament. There is of course nothing to admire about any of this, with its how-low-can-you-go aesthetic. But this is a case where admiration simply isn't the goal. You could say that the online casino is instead relying on an extreme version of a very old promotional theory: All exposure is good exposure.



The Beast Under Your Toenail
Lamisil's stomach-turning ad.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, July 14, 2003, at 10:46 AM PT

When animated roaches tremble in a television commercial, you can be certain that a heroic can of bug spray is about to make an appearance. This is a time-honored strategy, but it's tougher to make it work than you might think. There's a delicate balance in making such a spokesvillain creepy enough that you want to dispatch him—but not so revolting that you simply want to change the channel. A recent ad for a medication called Lamisil illustrates the same sort of challenge. You can see it at above.

The ad begins with an animated, and rather hideous, creature. He has a big wide, thin-lipped mouth, slitty eyes, jutting ears, a tail, creepy little spots, nasty tufts of hair jutting out of his body. Also claws. He says his name is Digger. He is a dermatophyte— "you know," he says, "a nail infection." He darts over to a huge toe—a normal-looking, human toe. "All I want," Digger says, "is to get in here." Then he reaches up, and pulls the toenail back.

This is horrifying. I wasn't taking notes, but I think the first time I saw it I said something like, "Aaaaaarrrrrrggghhhhhh!"

Digger then wiggles under the toenail. "You can't get me with clippers or those surface treatments you try on your own," he says, oblivious the yelping home viewer, as he dances across a landscape meant to represent the tender area under your toenail—"your nailbed," he calls it, as he begins clawing into the pinkish landscape, and a dozen more creatures just like him materialize and also begin digging. The landscape runs brown and cracked.

Cut to: a picture of a sick-looking toe, as an announcer asks: "Do you have discolored or flaky nails?" Before you can scream, "NO I DO NOT! WHY ARE YOU TORTURING ME?" he goes on to explain that "Millions of people do," and Lamisil, a prescription pill, may solve the problem, and so on.

Why would Novartis, which makes Lamisil, want to inflict such a disturbing set of images on an unsuspecting public? Well, because presumably some members of that public really do have discolored or flaky nails, and they probably really want to do something about it. It's true, as many a culture pundit has said for years, that we live in a more niche-oriented world than ever. Many a marketing pundit has further predicted that in the future, every product will be sold through niche channels, neatly matching audience with product. But Lamisil raises the obvious question about this theory. Will there, some day, be a world in which it is possible to micro-target dermatophyte sufferers? How? Will there be a special channel for them? A magazine? Will something about their spending patterns at Amazon.com give them away?

Well, maybe. Meanwhile, many more of us will see the likes of Digger than ever wanted to. And if, some day, we find that our toenails are suddenly yellow and flaky, we will quite likely remember him. We might remember him like a bad dream, but we'll remember him. And that's all the makers of Lamisil really want.



What's Up, Chucks?
The arresting new ad for Converse sneakers.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Sept. 15, 2003, at 8:03 AM PT

Of all the well-known sneaker makers, Converse must have the lowest profile as an advertiser. So its new commercial may not seem like a big deal. But in fact the spot—see it here—is of special interest, both because it's pretty cool and also because it comes just a few months after the announcement that Converse has agreed to sell out—to Nike, the shoemaker giant that seems to be its polar opposite.

The ad takes place on an empty basketball court. We hear the shoe-squeaks and whoops of a game in progress, but all we see is the ball: Through some special-effect process, the ball whips around the court alone, as if tossed and dribbled by invisible players. Meanwhile, Mos Def offers a verse narration, which ends like this: "Before the money, and before the fame; before new and old school—before school had a name; it was only the ball and the soul of the game. The First School. Converse."

It's a really arresting and attention-getting spot, although there are a couple of odd things about it. One is the decision not to show the shoes moving around on the court—this is a sneaker ad, after all. The other (possibly related) is that you would have to be old-school indeed to hit the court in Chuck Taylor All-Stars these days. The number of pros who wear them is roughly zero, and while the fact that Chucks haven't changed is one of the things that appeals about them aesthetically, it also means they've been hopelessly outmoded by advancements in "shoe technology." Converse long ago migrated from a brand for athletes to a brand for hipsters, indie rockers, and lazy poseurs such as myself.

Converse is actually one of the very few brands that mean much to me on a personal level. It's been my sneaker of choice for almost 20 years now, and I really have a hard time imagining buying an offering from a rival like Adidas or—especially—Nike. Converse is the no-BS yin to Nike's all-style-and-image yang, the perennial underdog to bullyish Nike. So the buyout is disillusioning, like hearing that Elvis Costello is writing jingles for Microsoft (he's not, as far as I know). Clearly I'm not the only one who feels this way; shortly after the Nike deal was announced, the Washington Post interviewed various dismayed anarchists and college students who vowed never to buy Chucks again.

So you can see why Converse may want to float an ad right about now that's effective at, as a company release put it, "leveraging its authentic heritage." The clever thing about the "First School" notion is that while it appears to push the idea of an "authentic" basketball shoe, it's really more about an "authentic" fashion statement.

That sounds like an oxymoron, and strictly speaking it is. But in marketing, and maybe everywhere in pop culture at this point, "authentic" doesn't really mean authentic. It means "not so obviously phony." If I were to wear the latest Nike model, I'd look like a fraud; if I were to select footwear that expressed my "authentic" self, it would probably be a distasteful and worn-out pair of slippers. Chucks offer the illusion that I am coolly indifferent to the latest trends. I want to seem above it all, not out of it. In other words, what I want to be is not so much authentic as convincing.

Converse really does have an "authentic heritage," and the company is smart to make that a selling point. We'd all like a little more authenticity in our lives, and apparently it's possible to solve this problem by doing exactly what Nike did—by going out and buying some.



Suckling Sucks
A Quiznos ad proves that not all publicity is good.
By Rob Walker
Updated Monday, Oct. 20, 2003, at 8:32 AM PT

Unlike Subway, with its popular and theoretically inspirational spokesman, Quiznos is a sandwich chain that markets itself with an attitude. Past ads have included the chain's founder in his underwear and a woman being shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. But if the e-mail received by Ad Report Card is any indication, the latest example of this strategy is getting an unusual amount of attention. This may be good news for Quiznos, or it may not be, because a lot of those e-mailers are confused and appalled. You'll understand why when you see the current spots, which are available on the Quiznos site.

The first ad (it's labeled "mild" on the Web site) shows two men sitting on a public bench. One taunts the other for the latter's failure to buy a Quiznos sandwich on toasted bread and his willingness to settle for some inferior, non-Quiznos offering. "What," he says, "were you raised by wolves?" Here the other man pauses and stares off in a kind of reverie. We cut to an image of him, curled up (and wearing the same suit) with a family of wolves, who are licking his face. Then we cut back to the park bench, where this peculiar non-Quiznos eater smirks at his tormenter and says, "Yes. I was. Hm."

The message here is clear enough: If you don't eat Quiznos, you are some kind of freak. Fine.

But the second ad ("spicy" on the Web site) is the one people are interested in. It's basically the same, except that this time when the freak flashes back to his wolf roots, we see mama wolf laying on her side, and the guy, along with a baby wolf, energetically sucking her teat.

Now, just the fact that Quiznos has an ad that causes the viewer to think of the word "teat" is troubling enough. (I guess maybe you could tell yourself that he's "suckling," but I don't find that very pleasant, either.) But the puzzle of this ad is even more complex because Quiznos is, after all, selling food.

It's not unusual—in fact it's commonplace—for an advertiser to use a "shocking" image to slap viewers/consumers out of their stupor so they'll pay attention long enough to absorb a brand name. There was, for example, the case of the Verizon ferret (man is bitten on tongue by ferret and can summon help with text-messaging service). And actually, as these things go, this isn't a bad example of the tactic: It's a pretty funny commercial. But while many advertisers seem to operate on the theory that anything memorable—even something that's memorable for being horrid—is good, I'm not sure that's always the case. And this ad is a good example of how such thinking can go awry.

While the spot is funny, it's just not funny in a way that makes much sense for a food-seller that is trying to make you hungry for its (presumably) delicious products. When a potential customer walks by your restaurant, do you want the sight of your logo to call up a gross-out mental image? Given that the Quiznos message is probably something along the lines of "We sell sandwiches," it's probably smart to avoid linking that to the message, "You are feeling vaguely nauseated." All of which goes to show that even if an ad is entertaining and memorable, it can still end up sucking.



Chicken-Fried Bull
A new ad says KFC's drumsticks are good for you.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, Nov. 10, 2003, at 8:05 AM PT

KFC, the fast-food chicken chain, has a new ad out that seems, judging by my e-mail, to be bothering a lot of people. The problem is that the ad strongly suggests that fried chicken is the cornerstone of a healthy diet. Apparently, some people find this misleading. (You can see the spot at AdAge.com.)

The commercial begins with a stereotypical Lazy American Man slumped in the living room in front of The Game. In comes his slim and perky wife, who says, "Remember how we talked about eating better?" This causes Lazyman to make a face (understandably, I think). "Well," says the wife, "it starts today." Then she plops a 12-piece bucket of chicken in front of him. An announcer quickly reels off various facts and figures suggesting that KFC's chicken is healthier than Burger King's Whoppers. Lazyman, choking down another mouthful, removes any doubt among viewers that he's anything other than a slow-witted jackass by telling his wife that he's only doing this for her. The wife makes a sour face. What a miserable couple.

Anyway, KFC is plunging forward with this campaign, giving no apparent thought to the possibility that some will find it preposterous. In a somewhat astonishing press release, the company says it intends to "educate the public" that "fried chicken can be part of a healthy, balanced diet" and quotes the company's executive vice president of "marketing and food innovation" as saying: "With more and more Americans on diets and increasingly health-conscious, we thought it was important to get this information to consumers so they can judge for themselves how to make KFC part of their healthy lifestyle."

But it turns out that there are at least a handful of people who don't really buy the idea that a bucket of fried chicken is healthy eatin'. Well, of course it's not. Here's a little secret about advertising: It can be misleading. (You may not know this, but in real life, there is no brand of chewing gum or hair gel that will instantly transform you into a pulsing object of sexual desire. For instance.) After all, pretty much every ad for a weight-loss scheme or potion features not a picture of a pile of millet, but a shot of that one huge slice of chocolate cake or obscenely large steak that you're allowed to scarf down if you follow all the other rules.

Presumably, the KFC people simply figured that if the ever-credulous American public is willing to accept Dr. Phil as a weight-loss guru, or to buy the idea that Subway sandwiches will melt away their rolls of fat, then surely they'll lap up this pitch like so much chicken grease. Yeah, the company's official line talks up exercise (while the guy in the ad is a picture of sloth) and moderation (while showing two people splitting a bucket of the stuff). But who'll notice?

In a particularly brilliant maneuver, KFC's press release further suggests that you can make its chicken even more healthy by removing the skin. You have to appreciate the comedy of telling people to buy fried chicken and then toss the skin away. I only wish they'd had the guts to go further and point out that you can make your KFC bucket-meal healthier still by removing the skin, and then throwing away the chicken and preparing yourself a nice salad. (Try it. It's so good for you that afterward you can have a cigarette—provided you don't smoke it, of course.)

KFC will not go broke for having underestimated the stupidity of the American public, but I don't think this campaign is going to do much for sales. But the problem isn't that the ad is misleading (since it's fooling no one); the problem is that it so badly misunderstands the point of fried chicken. Fried chicken, done well, is a worthwhile thing. Its decadence trumps the entire concept of the "healthy lifestyle" and makes dieting seem like a flawed, pointless exercise for tedious goody-goodies (or awful and unhappy people like the couple in the ad). If KFC wants me to buy their fried chicken, the company should try to convince me that its product is actually worthy of the name. Maybe they considered that idea at some point—and decided that selling the stuff as health food just seemed more credible.



Your Cheatin' Cart
The problem with Hummer's new ad.
By Seth Stevenson
Posted Monday, Nov. 24, 2003, at 9:24 AM PT

Spot: "Big Race" (You can view it here).

Product: The Hummer H2 sport utility vehicle.

Synopsis: A moody-looking tween enters a soapbox derby. The car he builds looks remarkably like a Hummer H2, except much smaller (it could fit in the H2's wheel well) and made of wood (instead of ballistic chromified Kevlar or whatever).

At the start line, the kid's unorthodox, cobbled-together car gets snickered at. When the race begins, the other kids—in sleek, low-to-ground soapbox racers—speed down the winding pavement. The Hummer kid—in his big-wheeled contraption—veers off-road, cuts straight across all the switchbacks, careens back onto the pavement at the last instant, and crosses the finish line first.

(In the 60-second version, we also learn that the kid got the wood for the car by dismantling a doghouse. With the dog still in it.)

Analysis: This is an incredibly well made ad. I hate it.

The music is the Who's "Happy Jack," which is sort of a brilliant choice. On one level, the song tugs at boomers who rocked out to it in the '60s. But there's an ancillary target: The tune's stripped-down, British Invasion sound would fit right in on the Rushmore soundtrack, giving it some resonance with a younger crowd. (Rushmore actually used a different Who song from the same album.)

For sheer entertainment value, this is a fantastic commercial. Visually arresting. Engrossing narrative. (And an unexpectedly wussy, un-Hummer-y art-house pedigree: It was directed by the guy who did Shine, and the ad's cinematographer worked on Amélie.) Plus, of course, the kick-ass Who song. My problem is with its underlying ethics.

1. The Hummer kid cheats. Yes, the company's Web site offers "thinking outside the box" justifications, pointing out that the race rules are just "First one down wins." But I don't buy it. He fails to stay on a clearly demarcated course. In my book, that's an automatic DQ. Anyway, the off-road driving didn't even look that treacherous—I bet the regular cars could have handled it, too, if their drivers were little cheating brats. Were I the other kids, I would have ripped the wheels off the soapbox Hummer and beat the cheater about the head with them.

2. He endangers other racers. His car is much bigger and heavier, with a higher center of gravity. At one point, only minimally in control of his vehicle, drunk on the overconfidence he draws from his outsized deathmobile, the Hummer kid hurtles across the road right as the rest of the pack is passing. He just barely misses crushing another kid's car, and possibly spine.

3. What about the poor dog? We see it left abandoned in its now-useless doghouse, peering sadly through gaping holes where the slats the kid stole used to be. Conclusion: The Hummer kid hoards earth's precious resources, sating his own vanity at the expense of less fortunate, voiceless members of society.

Of course, some will love the shameless Hummer kid and his take-no-prisoners, win-at-all-costs individualism. Not coincidentally, these are the sort of people who buy Hummers. It would make no sense for the company to aim this spot at folks craving a quiet, go-along-get-along image, because those people aren't buying 40-ton cars. The Hummer kid is a me-first kid, and the Hummer is without doubt a me-first vehicle.

But the company tries to have it both ways. By showing us that the kid has devised a novel race strategy, worked hard to build his ramshackle entry, and gotten ridiculed at the start line, Hummer tries to steal back a little respect and good will. The ad also lets the Hummer buyer spin his purchase as an act of clever outsiderism, recasting his inner bully as a scrappy underdog. It failed to convert me, but then I drive a 1992 Honda Accord.

As the kid crosses the finish line, the Who sings, "And they couldn't prevent Jack from feeling happy," and that's an appealing notion: No one can stop me from being happy, once I've got my Hummer. No one, I tell you! To my eyes, though, as the kid closes out his no doubt soon-to-be-disputed soapbox victory, he looks less happy than determined and grim.

Grade: B. Probably the most memorable car ad since Volkswagen's "Mr. Blue Sky" spot. Points off for moral bankruptcy.