I'm listening to a Christmas story narrated by a wonderful actor with a wonderful voice, the late Edward Arnold, on XM Classics Channel 164. It's kind of a holiday tradition- I sit at the kitchen table and prepare review sheets and midterm exams while my mom bakes, and we both enjoy the old radio shows provided to us by XM/Sirius. Today, however, we are in for an unpleasant surprise:
It's a commercial break, but instead of the usual "Easy Credit" and "Work from Home" and "Pay off your debt in 15 minutes" schemes, we get an absolutely horrible, nerve-grating, two-minute rap about how incredible 7-11 is. As near as I can tell, the "story" of the rap "song" is how the "singer" wins over this hot new girl in town by taking her down to the local 7-11 and buying her coffee. That might be totally inaccurate, however, since I was more interested in turning the volume down than paying attention to the actual "lyrics."
I do know that the "song" ended with the "singer" uttering the words "I'll take my coffee with a serving of HER." Clever, no? Well, no. But it's downright brilliant compared to the geniuses who sold this pile of obnoxious drivel to XM/Sirius and agreed to have it run on a channel marketed almost exclusively to people over the age of 65. Good call, 7-11-- I'm sure that if one of your stores was operating within a reasonable distance from my parents' house (we have our own version of 7-11 up here, called Cumberland Farms) this commercial would have sent them rushing to buy coffee, slurpees and heat-lamp hot dogs. I'm sure that it's because they don't want to be reminded of their lack of a 7-11 franchise they'll be rushing to the radio to hit the mute button whenever this steaming pile of excrement comes on. And not because their ears are bleeding.
Seriously, what were you guys at 7-11 thinking? Commercials featuring rap on Classic Radio? Do you think that the makers of Depends Undergarments buy commercial time on Radio Disney? Just brilliant.
Ha--you've reminded me of when I worked in the sales department of a TV station. Some of our programs arrived with national commercials bundled in with them. One such commercial was for the Long John Silver's restaurant chain. On a fairly regular basis, we'd receive calls from viewers wanting to know where the nearest Long John Silver's in our area was. Answer: we didn't have any. These calls always came from senior citizens. Usually they'd be quite indignant.
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