Better Dead Than RedThose awful AT&T ads starring Carrot Top.
Posted Monday, May 5, 2003, at 10:54 AM ET
Something like a year ago, maybe longer than that, readers started e-mailing me demanding to know why AT&T's collect-call business had chosen Carrot Top as a spokesman. Their distaste for the zany prop comic was palpable, and I shared it. But oh, I thought, what the readers don't know is that by the time I write the thing, AT&T will have wised up and sent Top packing. I was wrong. Just the other night I saw what must be the 20th AT&T Carrot Top ad. In a move of questionable value to the commercial-watching public, AT&T has actually collected a bunch of these spots online.
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StumbleUponThe one I saw the other night is called "Race Top," and it's as good an example as any. The setup is a scene like the famous drag race in Rebel Without a Cause, but one of the drivers is Carrot Top. When the other car peels out, he just sits there and says to the girl who started the race: "Hey. C'mere. Need to make a collect call?" Then he gives the spiel that's in every one of these ads: "Just dial down the center! C-A-L-L-A-T-T ! It's free for you, and cheap for them!" Then he suggests that since the other driver is gone, she ought to jump into his car. This is the basic formula: a very, very slight joke squeezed in before and after the sales pitch. In another ad, Top is on a date at a fancy restaurant—and he suggests that the lady make a collect call. After the pitch, Top says he forgot his wallet, so his date will have to pay. Usually he's hitting on someone—female police officers, tourists, skater-girl types, etc. Often he is "comically" rebuffed.
The ads are never actually funny. Nor is Carrot Top, so far as I know. I've spent some time combing the Web looking for evidence of the Carrot Top fan base. Interviews suggest that he is popular on college campuses. He also works in Vegas. Although there's no prop humor in the AT&T spots, much of what he does is prop-based. One example that comes up a lot is a plate for bulimics, which is attached to a miniature toilet. Another is a purse for prostitutes, which has a built in credit-card machine.
Is this really what the college students of America find funny? That group is supposedly a key market for collect calls; AT&T says its primary target is the 18- to 24-year-old age group, with 12- to 17-year-olds as the secondary target. (Another group that makes a lot of collect calls is prisoners, but that's another story.) But I am too optimistic to believe that tomorrow's leaders find authentic humor in Carrot Top's act, so I can only conclude that something more subtle is going on. Spokespeople for collect-call services tend to be either babes (Jamie Pressly, Alyssa Milano) or absurd (Mr. T). Babes make sense (for about half the audience, anyway) for obvious reasons. The absurd choices—and this would include Carrot Top—must appeal to the budding ironist. So perhaps Carrot Top is presiding over some sort of massive meta-ironist performance piece.
After all, his whole persona seems to be bound up in the notion that he is someone you would cross a busy street to avoid. When David Letterman came back from a few weeks of sick leave recently, he showed a brief highlight reel of guest hosts who filled in for him. The last was Carrot Top, who was shown sitting at Dave's desk and then being hustled away by stage hands, as a screen caption explained "Carrot Top not invited to guest host," or words to that effect. This in turn recalled an episode of The Larry Sanders Show in which Carrot Top was the "unwanted guest." The funniest thing about Carrot Top has always been that no one thinks he's funny. He does not dispense punch lines; he is a punch line.
Perhaps the real message of his work, then, is a critique that makes a mockery not just of the entertainment industry, but of the very notion of meritocracy in America—his success being the most damning evidence to date that the marketplace of talent is a sham. If so, the AT&T ads are the most irrefutable brief yet in this project to illuminate the maddening power of raw chance in the modern game of getting ahead because their star is not just singularly unfunny, but authentically grating. You want to take a stick to Carrot, but, truly, you cannot beat him.
And from AT&T's point of view, grating seems to work. I can't imagine needing to make a collect call, but even if these ads stop tomorrow, I will probably remember C-A-L-L-A-T-T for at least 15 years. So it hardly matters how stony-faced I remained when I see the umpteenth Top ad because it turns out the joke is actually on me.
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Remarks from the Fray:
First things first, let's define our demographic: the collect-call ads all seem to be aimed at young males. Two themes pop up among the spokespeople: Column A - attractive women, and Column B: absurd famous "men" (Mr. T, Terry Bradshaw, Carrot Top, ALF--yes, methinks there's a theme at work here). The purpose of the females is obvious, and the purpose of the male figures is imaginably that they are people who can easily be looked down on (even by people who need to save 2 cents/min. collect calls), or who aren't pretentious celebrities: despite even Mr. T's bulk, he's nobody's idol. Clearly, the collect-call companies are aiming for people who A) lack female attention and B) have inferiority complexes--in other words, young broke straight men. This seems entirely plausible--Mr. Walker should have noted that AT&T's previous collect-call spokesman was David Arquette, a regular-shlub-type actor who must have alienated the collect-call demographic by marrying a babe (Courtney Cox). Having success in Column A drops you out of Column B, and you lose your gig. Maybe the phone companies know what they're doing after all.
--CaptainRonVoyage
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Apparently Rod, you've missed your own calling. As any basic student of Advertising will tell you - Annoying is just as good or better a form of advertising than a good commercial. In fact - in a market saturated with "CALL XXX - BLAH BLAH BLAH" - if you want people to remember you - Annoying is probably the best way to go. Much as I'd like to see the 'Top run over by a truck - and to call him a comedian is to cause Belushi, Kennison, Radner and other great but gone comedy genius' of our time permanent post death insult -- the Ads work. To prove that they work well - keep in mind what you find annoying about the Ad is that it's CARROT TOP you're annoyed with - not AT&T. Now THAT is good advertising. Let's face it - anyone else - and you'd be annoyed with the Ad itself and not just the comedian. Here's a rule of thumb in advertising - do you remember it enough to complain about it? Good. Do you remember it enough to remember whose ad it is? Good. It worked. After that ... it's just product placement.
--November
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AT&T casts characters like Carrot Top, Alf and Mr. T in order to be "meta-ironic?" I'm not sure what "meta-irony" is (or how it differs from plain "irony") but I seriously doubt it had anything to do with their decision. I offer a more compelling explanation: money. Is it any surprise that AT&T needs to browse the celebrity bargain bin for their ads given the economic weakness of the telecommunication industry? This explains why we are still seeing Carrot Top in new commercials: long-term contracts are more cost effective than one-time spots. They probably purchased the rights to Alf wholesale, which means we'll be seeing him in their commercials for years to come...Assuming AT&T doesn't go out of business first. I say we give 'em a push by dialing zero instead of this ridiculous "dialing down the middle," so we can finally put an end to these repellent ads. Now THAT would be ironic.
--Ang_Cho
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This article is a perfect illustration of a business school maxim: If a commercial makes no sense, don't worry. You are not in the target market of the product being pitched.
--MichiganMike
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(5/5)