10 Ads The US Won't See 536
prostoalex writes "Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States. The Gucci G-Spot turned out to be too risque, video for Drug-Free America was deemed too disgusting, Internet's favorite Honda "Cog" commercial won't air due to the high prices for a 2-minute spot, and Japanese commercials with American actors have contracts preventing the companies to run the same ads in the US. AdAge provides a link to the pictures and video (Windows Media .ASF format, alas) of the 10 best unaired commercials." I can get the ASFs working under VLC.
What about ads you can only see here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, I must agree that the "best" commercial is no commercial at all.
Ads will HAVE to become better very soon (Score:5, Insightful)
don't welcome any new ads. The only good ad is the blocked/skipped ad.
Yeah, but I hate to break it to you: you're not the majority. How many non-football fans watch the SuperBowl each year because of the commericials? A lot. That's because it's the one time of the year that you can be guaranteed that advertisers are honestly trying to catch your attention. So much of the other advertisements are bland and uninteresting. They're just not trying.
I think as technologies like TiVo start to take off there is going to be more and more pressure placed on adverising companies to come up with innovative ads that people won't mind sitting through. The real pickle for these companies is constantly coming up with new ads that are entertaining and push the limits and still not offensive to the majority of the American public. When I was younger I often wondered why ads suck so much. Surely there are tons of witty people who could write clever ads! Why aren't they being given the chance? Well, as I grew older I started to realize that a lot of humor is actually borderline offensive to a lot of people. Or they're simply too slow to 'get' the joke. Humor is, of course, the cheapest way to construct an interesting commerical. Other ways include novel imagery but this takes more talent and, arguably, more money.
Anyhow, I'm thinking that in the next 5 years we're going to see an improvement in the quality of advertisements to the point that they start to become entertainment in their own right. If companies do not do this, their ads are simply going to get blocked/skipped by an increasingly dissatisfied viewing public.
GMD
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
best commercial? (Score:1, Insightful)
TV Programming has come to the point where the shows themselves are simply vehicles for product placement.
Look at all the coca-cola and ford positioning in the American Idol show for example of extreme product
placement.
I'd rather see a good well-done commercial than another half hour of typical drek television any
time. The expense per unit time of the commerical
is hundreds of times more than the show, especially
if the show is animated or syndicated.
Then again, I'd rather watch a Seinfeld rerun than a new episode of that stupid P. Hilton moron any time.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was under the impression that the Honda "Cog" commercial wasn't released in the US was because the car which was being advertised was a UK-only model!
Who cares what model they showed? They're advertising their build quality.
Re:Ads will HAVE to become better very soon (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just that, either. It's that the same commercial gets shown every break, and occasionally twice in the same break. We have a commercial-skipping VCR, so on those rare occasions when we actually watch something non-timeshifted, we're boggled that anyone would voluntarily watch TV that way. Even when it's a decent commercial, by the fourth time in fifteen minutes it's just unwatchable.
Re:Shit nuggets taste better than testicles?! (Score:4, Insightful)
The USA is incredably sexually screwed up.
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Show me some facts. Tell me why your product is better than your competitors. Show me a good price.
I'm not holding my breath, a fact-based advertising model would kill so many popular brands and empower consumers it wouldn't even be funny.
I beg to differ (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently you missed some of the finer points of this bit here. [slashdot.org] Why make better commercials when you can redefine the medium to require viewing of commercials? Think "Disney DVD."
We already have the "broadcast bit" in our flavor of ATSC now, what's to stop some new standard including a "no channel surfing bit?" It would allow broadcasters to charge even more to advertisers, which they would then argue would enable more/better shows. Why wouldn't Congress let this happen?
Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:3, Insightful)
They make statements like:
'No other xxx is more effective'
'No other xxx is stronger'
'No other xxx is better at...'
'Even xxx isn't better than...'
But if you actually think about what they are saying with those statements, they are not saying that their own product is better than any other product.
They are actually saying that they are *all* just as effective/strong/whatever as each other.
People just read into statements phrased that way that they are saying their product is better than the others.
Listen to how they compare stuff these days in ads and you will see what I mean, and probably be astonished at how many ads do this.
Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Shit nuggets taste better than testicles?! (Score:1, Insightful)
Stupidity can spread like a plague. Unwed highschool-age mothers are flagrantly displaying their stupidity. I wouldn't want a teenage crack addict spending time with my kids either.
And we still get our panties in a twist because the someone might want to marry someone who has the same genetals as them.
It's not possible. You can't marry someone of the same gender anymore than you can murder a dead man. The meaning of the word prevents it from happening.
The USA is incredably sexually screwed up.
Yes. Because somewhere along the line, people stopped saying "That is wrong", everything is acceptable and you're a bigot if you don't go along with it.
LK
Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that many of the people that originally came to this country did it to escape religious persecution. So in other words many of the worlds religious nuts came to this country and are now sending letters in to fox because they said the word "ass" one too many times. Well things are changing alittle. I think it is actually ok to say "ass" on tv and in fact fox is thinking of changing their slogan so it has the word "ass" in it. So basically the US is 20-30 years (at least) behind the rest of the world when it comes to putting sex on TV.
What I don't understand is that I believe that we are 10-20 years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to putting violence on TV and movies.
enter rant mode:
I mean WTF? It is ok to have a movie where millions of people have their cuts spewed out of them in violent death scenes but god forbid if anyone could use the media to figure out where babies come from. Many years ago I saw in the video store that they made a PG version of the movie titanic. What made it PG? Did thousands of people not get sent to their horrifying death? No mostly they just took out the sex scenes. I mean no one should know that Kate Winslet is acutally anatomically correct. And another thing, why the hell do they put brail instruction on drive through ATMs?
rant mode off
Re:Shit nuggets taste better than testicles?! (Score:1, Insightful)
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
Tim
Re:Saying something is wrong because of a words... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Actuarial data shows that male-female married couples cause cause less loss for insurance companies, so guess what...They get better rates. "
While it's true that married couples get better rates and may even cause less loss, I'm not sure how this applies to your argument against homosexuality. I don't suppose you have evidence to suggest that male-male or female-female unions cause more loss, do you? All you've shown is that married couples cause less loss than single individuals.
"Marriage (as it currently exists) is a stabilizing force in society"
"stabalizing force" is a rather subjective phrase, don't you think? Stabalizing by whose standards? I mean, divorce rates have generally hung around the same amount (between 40 and 50 percent). Doesn't seem that stabalizing to me. Besides, a recent article published by the University of Washington suggests that homosexual couples have a similar rate of relationship dissolution compared to heterosexual divorce rates (
http://web.psych.washington.edu/news/index.php
Of course, what you really meant to say was that it was destabalizing for you since you don't like seeing men in love with other men, right?
"the government has to spend less money in housing and rehabilitating prisoners when society is stable."
That statement is a no brainer, but again I ask to see your evidence that homosexual couples somehow cause more instability. The most frequent instability I can think of are the crimes commited against them by bigots, but I hardly think it's fair to blame homosexuals for that.
"Married couples have children,..."
Homosexuals can adopt children...
Re:I beg to differ (Score:2, Insightful)
The same thing that keeps them from prohibiting TVs with an "Off" button or a removable plug-in power supply...it interferes too much with the average consumer's usage pattern, which means that no standards body or even legislative body is going to make it happen.
Anything that interferes with how Joe Sixpack watches TV is not going to become part of American TV, no matter who might want it to. Channel-surfing has been part of that since the remote control was invented, and skipping commercials on the VCR (with the fast-forward button, if your VCR doesn't do it automatically) is pretty much there too.
Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a little like white Australians trying to keep immigrants out.
The USA is now a 'stale' country. Lack of immigrants, misguided belief that the state can protect them from terrorism, and a very strong isolationism that is helped by the geographic position. Fear is a big help for people to join up with churches.
Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:4, Insightful)