Commercials are supposedly made up of clever tactics that entice us to watch, buy or believe whatever they are telling us about. Considering I watch many TV shows, and buy a lot of stuff, I would assume that some of these commercial tactics work on me. But today I want to talk about 3 kinds that don't.
And then I will return you to your regularly scheduled programming :)
The first type of commercial that has no impact on me is insurance commercials. Recently they have become kind of funny...I don't mind Flo, Mayhem is pretty awesome, I like when the random space monkey comes floating down from the sky...but my biggest issue with insurance commercials is that they all promise to save you money if you switch to them.
That is not possible.
They can't all be the cheapest insurance. If they were I could just jump back and forth between chatting with Geico for 15 minutes and snapping my fingers for a State Farm agent until they were paying me to have me insured.
(Side note: I hate the word "bundle.")
The next type of commercial I shake my head at are the misleading ones that try to get you to watch TV shows.
The "Bachelor" series is on its 23rd or 24th season right now. The chances that this season's finale will be "the most dramatic ever" are...well...1/24, and getting slimmer by the season...it's just statistics. And the editing done to these commercials is almost shameful. Shameful because it's so predictable. You can count on the fact that whatever they suggest is going to happen will not happen. If they make it seem like the Bachelorette is going to choose no one, then you can count on her picking the winner in the first 20 minutes of the show.
Finally, the last kind of commercial tactic I'm not buying into is when they present something as very bad when it's not, or at least when you're not sure it is. That's not a very good explanation so thank God for examples.
Lysol loves blowing up germs until they look like carnivorous monsters roughly the size of your entire kitchen island.
Naturally, these horrible creatures must be ousted before they kidnap your children.
But, A.) This is nowhere close to what germs look like (say my science-major friends who have looked at a lot of things under microscopes) and B.) We need germs to live. The fact that Lysol, Purell, etc. kills 99.9% of germs is not a good thing. If you are a healthy, normal person, living in entirely sterile environment scrubbed down with bleach is probably not helping you much.
While there are lots of commercials I find myself rolling my eyes at...there are definitely still some that work.
Tell me you don't want to drink Diet Coke and throw a boardwalk-roller-skating party after watching this commercial:
That's what I thought.
"I'm a hot babe out jogging...trying to make sure that this stays a 10."
-Mayhem, Allstate Commercials
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