Domino's Soft Sell + Hard Sell = No Sale

I couldn't care less how much you love your stores, Dominos franchise owners.  Don't care how you got the money to start them up, don't care if they "mean everything to you," and sure as hell don't care that when the order came down from the people who REALLY own the stores to remodel, you were just fine with that.

So now that you've failed to win me over with your Tales of American Entrepreneurship....

I couldn't care less that Domino's sludge factories look more modern now, or include plexiglass partitions to allow stupid gawky kids to stare at the pizza-building monkeys who must really feel like they are in a cage, and wasn't working here for minimum wage humiliating enough without being on display like this?

And I'm sure you think that watching people smash windows and knock down walls in slow motion to some crappy rap song (I don't care how many YouTube commentors desperately "need" the song, btw) is super entertaining and all that, but it's not going to distract us from the simple fact that for all of the Spirit of the Small Businessman, the Glossy New Decor, or the Really Cool Destruction that went into making Domino's Lowest Common Denominator Pizza Distributors look different, this is just an attempt to put a whole lot of lipstick on a really, really ugly pig.  Because in the end, this is still just Domino's.  Adding giant pans of pasta isn't getting me through that door.  Improving the look isn't getting me through that door.  The only thing that could get me through that door is decent food- and I notice you aren't talking about making radical improvements to THAT anywhere in these ads.

So I'll continue to pass on the bland, flabby carbs and sugar, sorry.  Hope you own the rights to that music, though.  There are a lot of idiots on Youtube who apparently are willing to pay for it.

Subaru's Camping Dog commercial screams nothing but RUN!

Yeah, sorry, but the girl in the ad isn't anywhere cute enough to pull this crap.

You're taking your dog on a camping trip with your boyfriend?  Seek counseling, please.  Or just admit that you don't really want a boyfriend as much as you want to keep your relationship with your dog.

And, buddy?  Like I said in the first sentence- this girl isn't cute enough for this level of stupid.  There are worst things than not having a date on the weekend.  Unless you think that you're going to REPLACE that dog before too long, I'd really rethink this whole thing.  But heck, I guess there are guys out there who don't mind dating women who can't be parted from their freaking smelly mammal housemates.  I'm just not one of them, and I don't get them.  At all.

(BTW, anyone else think that I could just devote this blog to these Subaru "love" commercials and have plenty of opportunities to post?)

And I'm doing the Calling BS on Dairy Queen thing

This guy couldn't make it more obvious that he's a boyfriend doing the Daddy Thing - maybe, trying out for the role of daddy- and is in no way related to the little boy he's purchased a small amount of ice cream for to distract that boy from the honey barbecue wings and fries he's purchased for himself.

And even while he does his best to "do the daddy thing" in the hopes of finally getting the boy's mommy to rescue him from the Friend Zone, he's rather quietly waxing poetic about the good old days when he could wolf down real honey barbecue wings at Hooter's with his equally obnoxious, equally single friends.

So good luck with that whole "Daddy Thing," not-Daddy.  I'm sure this boy's mother will be super-impressed that you blew a whole 99 cents on that cup of ice cream so he wouldn't go without any lunch at all.  While you ate chicken and talked to the cameraman how cool it used to be to spend all afternoon at the sports bar guzzling beer and wings brought to you by hot girls in tight tops and even tighter shorts.  Takes dedication.

Ok now THIS is a funny ad, though I don't think that's what the makers of Jardiance intended...

So the guy in this ad is walking around town carrying a tablet and accompanied by a cameraman and an intern hauling around his pretentious director's chair, randomly asking people on the street if they have diabetes?  And if they say yes, asking them if they know that diabetes increases their chances of a "cardiovascular event?"  And if they say no, whipping out that tablet and showing them "evidence" in the form of a cheap powerpoint one of my ninth graders could have created in five minutes?   Really?

If any of this was even remotely sincere, how long did this guy have to wander around town before he finally found someone who answered "yes" to the question about having diabetes and "no" to the question about cardiovascular issues AND agreed to take part in a conversation about Jardiance which would appear in a national television commercial?  Did he just walk up to people who looked middle-aged and overweight, figuring "hey, they look like their are at least candidates for diabetes, and they also look like they have really lousy doctors who didn't explain all the risks involved to them?"

And I seriously can't get over that director's chair.  When does this guy use it?  It's only him and his cameraman- who is he directing?  Does he just use it to take breaks from annoying (and then frightening) total strangers on the street about their potentially fatal health issues Better Get Your Doctor To Put You On Yet Another Drug Right Now?  What the hell?

Cars.com's Lie Detector ad - all the humor is in the comment section

Never mind the ad- it's even dumber than most car ads and even less to do with actual cars than most car ads.  In a nutshell, the message is that Cars.com makes car buying so easy that you might miss the "drama" of buying a car the old-fashioned way (personally, I'd rather walk into a car dealership and make the salesmen do their job, and I've never experienced any "drama" while buying a car- that's all on the salesman's side, I am the one who will make the decision which will determine if he makes money, after all- but that's just me.)

The car salesmen, sensing that the guy here does miss the drama, attaches him to a lie detector machine, and he goes along with it Because Commercials.  And his horrible shrew of a wife, instead of saying something like sensible like "take those stupid things off your fingers, these people are insane, let's go find the car at a dealership not run by insane people," decides to ask exactly one question that could only have been written by a male- "do you think my sister is prettier than me?"

Since the guy's response is to freeze and sweat and panic before screaming and tearing off the electrodes, I guess the answer is "yes" but he doesn't want to say.  So maybe this couple ends up in counseling instead of buying a car together.  Maybe the guy just decides he no longer wants to live with this manipulative, insecure harpy and decides to file for divorce and give her sister a call.  I don't know, because I'm kind of "never-minding" the actual ad.

No, just skip the ad and go to the comment section.  It apparently doesn't bother any of these mouth-breathing children that this ad has no punchline.  They all think that it's LOL HILARIOUS and at least one even suggests that it should have been a Superbowl ad.  That's much more horrible than this commercial.  The only thing that justifies this level of praise for a commercial as noxiously void of humor as this one is if the posters doing the praising are all paid tools of Cars.com.  That would still be sad.  But I'd rather think that was the case than believe that this many people wouldn't know funny if it crushed their skull with a hammer.  Which is also not a bad idea. 

Time to put this bit to bed, Chevy

First of all, this guy's face has become so ubiquitous on America's tv screens that it's really hard to believe that anyone wouldn't recognize him in relation to Chevrolet in about fifteen seconds.  And then punch him hard in the mouth for presuming that you want to be in a stupid Chevy commercial.*

Second, the "real people" in this ad are so quick to just "go along" with the Chevy carnival barker and get into someone else's car, aren't they?  Not like any sane people, who would say "um, no- I don't want to get into someone else's car.  I just want my car.  And I don't want to be in your stupid commercial, either.  So I'm not signing a release.  So get the f-- out of my face and get my f--ing car, please."  Yeah, these are "real people, not actors."  It would be a lot more honest if Chevy just told us that these were "real people, wannabee actors" (check out the guy's "not my car" double-take.  Very genuine, buddy.  I'm really sold on the idea that you're surprised.  Uh huh.)

Third, nobody is getting into a strange car to "check it out" when they just left a restaurant and want to drive away in their car.  If I wasn't one of these "real people, obvious actors" camera whores, I'd be pretty damned resentful that I'm basically being offered a chance to look at a really NICE car while I'm waiting for my obviously inferior one.  F--k you, Chevy.

*Can we agree that this guy has maybe the most punchable face on television?

I bought you this phone so can you at least change your Facebook relationship status now?

Hey ladies, guess what?  If a guy you've been dating for a month buys you a  $900 iPhone, he's given up trying to date you and moved on to attempting to buy you.

So if you are the kind of girl who can be bought, this guy is a perfect catch for you- looks like he's got money and he's willing to spend it.  And if you are the kind of girl who maybe can't be bought but can be guilted into being more serious with a guy because he buys you inappropriately expensive gifts after a month of dating, you are the perfect catch for this kind of guy.

I know, I know- the "message" of this ad is actually supposed to be "here's an excuse to buy yourself that iPhone you want- just buy one for someone else and get yours at the same time."  It's still uber-creepy that this guy doesn't have any longtime friends, relatives etc he can pull this on, and instead has to resort to handing someone he barely knows a very expensive gift which will be welcomed only by golddiggers, extremely shallow people or women who are genereally not users but really, really want the iPhone8.