When Did Commercials Become Filled With Ugly People?
You can’t turn on the TV these days without there being some ad that leaves you scratching your head wondering, 'who the hell thought that was a good idea?' Stupid music, dumb people doing annoying things, and a very high percentage of them are just downright ugly. When did this happen?
There isn’t an Amazon TV commercial that doesn’t feature some kind of weirdo. There's the one with the semi-cross-dressing freak buying whatever. I honestly have no idea what that creature with the unibrow is looking for because I look away when it’s on. Should an ad make the viewer recoil? Should it cause bulimia?
I have to assume this is a deliberate choice, otherwise they’d bust out the weed whacker and slice through that brow.
Then there’s the hairy guy who may or may not live in some Nordic country who needs to buy sheep sheers to shave his hairy chest so his fat ass can jump into cold water while people watch. I assume there’s some kind of story to the ad, but what will remain a mystery – it’s just one fat guy getting wet and cold, something he’s very excited about, while others are there. I honestly never even noticed if anyone else looked wet in the ad, it’s just so stupid it’s hard to focus on anything else.
I get that Jeff Bezos and his fiancé are fans of plastic surgery, or at least they sure seem to be, but at some point shouldn’t they notice people aren’t looking at them because he’s rich but because they both kind of look like disastrous “after” pictures in a newspaper ad from a law firm fishing for clients who’ve been abused by a malicious doctor?
The next step is an Amazon ad for a bone saw with a guy living in a cabin in the woods.
Amazon isn’t the only one making incredibly stupid ads featuring wildly unattractive people. Sephora and Ulta Beauty, ironically, have a lot of cross-dressing “trans” people pushing their garbage.
Honestly, if you’re looking for beauty advice from a hairy fem-guy, you’re doing it wrong. If you think a confused guy wearing glitter lip gloss is the key to moving your product, your product should be a moving van because normal people will get the hell away from you as quickly as humanly possible.
I know you’re not supposed to say these things, but I can’t bring myself to care anymore. I have a wife and two daughters, and while the daughters are too young for most of this crap, when I do buy them nail polish or something for my wife, I avoid these places like the plague. I’m sure the products they sell are fine, I just want nothing to do with the company.
Embracing mentally unstable people is not “tolerance,” it’s exploitation. These companies are gross. They’re a couple of ad campaigns away from embracing a child molester as a “minor-attracted person” with a “love is love” campaign. Yeah, they’re that gross.
Who do they think this appeals to? Who looks at a commercial with a guy dressed like a woman and thinks, “This captures who I am!”? What is the percentage of the population that such ads draw in, less than one? What is the percentage it repels? When your ad campaign involves the hope that people seeing it aren’t paying attention to the details of it, you’re doing something wrong.
I’m glad I’m not a stockholder of these companies because even if they don’t cause the stock to crater, they and the people who signed off on it are most definitely holding back the progress.
And don’t get me started on the stupid lyrics in songs in some of these ads. Fanatics ads for NFL gear feature songs that people with brain damage recognize as dumb. If your market is people who buy things stupid people want, you’re gonna grow like crazy. As for me, I’m never going to use your products.
I’m old enough to remember when ads were about glamour and trying to sell the idea that your life could be like the commercial if only you had their product. It was selling an illusion, but it was an aspirational one. Now it’s punishment. A threat: Use this and the people you hope your kids never turn into or move into your neighborhood will…I don’t know what.
If they’re trying to appeal to as few people as possible, well done. If they’re hoping to draw in new customers, well, they’ve certainly cornered the Cro-Magnon market, for whatever that’s worth.
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