Dannon Yogurt Ads: the bane of daytime television....

I spend every January visiting the Vermont farmhouse I grew up in, usually parked in front of the tv grading a mountain of midterm exams while my mom watches Soap Operas and Lifetime Movies For White Women.  It's the one week a year that I get a lot of exposure to the world of Daytime Television, which means it's the one week a year I get a lot of exposure to the world of Daytime Television Commercials.  And I'm reminded that there's more on sale than cars, drugs, cell phones and beer.

For instance, they sell a lot of toilet paper during the day.  And "feminine protection" products.  And fabric softener and air fresheners.  And diapers. 

And yogurt.  Lots and lots of yogurt.  Which means lots and lots of women like this one, who finds herself utterly enthralled at the idea of eating "cheesecake" and "chocolate pudding" and "key lime pie" without worrying that her husband is going to dump her for the babysitter because she's starting to look her age, because now she can "indulge" in all those "bad foods" in yogurt form.  So while hubby is off doing whatever he does to provide for the family mansion and Lexus payments, TrophyStepfordWife wanders about the grocery store looking at the stuff she COULD be eating if she wasn't in constant fear of losing that girlish figure and going right to the stuff she CAN eat which kind of sort of maybe tastes a little like the stuff she WANTS to eat. 

After she frantically grabs an armful of Keep Me Thin Keep Husband Happy Keep Me In That Home I Sold Myself For yogurt, she'll stop by the pharmacy area to pick up her monthly supply of VitaLift, Revlon Anti-Aging Serum, etc. etc. before heading home for an hour on the Pelaton bike.  Then it's time to pick up the kids and get dinner ready.  Husband and kids like to eat.  This woman? She's what yogurt was invented for. 

This happened on my tv, courtesy of Lexus

I don't know what any of this bs is all about, and I really don't care, either.  On the most superficial level, it's a muscular young black guy dancing around in a box with a red Lexus.  With the help of CGI magic he does gravity-defying stunts in an apparent celebration of German engineering.  This goes on for about a minute, and then we cut to the standard "look how fast this car can go on wet streets" bit.

And then we have the YouTube paid-by-the-comment making-a-little-money-on-the-side soul-be-damned monkeys typing about how much they adore the ad and the car they'll never come close to owning and letting us know where we can download the awesome music, etc. etc. etc.  It's all very obvious and phony and stupid and sad, but hey, who am I to diss another man's hustle.  Times are tough, right?

Anyway, enjoy this Lexus ad, if you can.  If you find it difficult, keep in mind that at least it doesn't feature some rich jackass being given the car by his equally rich spouse in front of their also-rich children standing in the driveway of their massively opulent Suburban McMansion.  We won't  be seeing ads like that again for another ten months or so.  So at least there's that.

Harness your Humans!

Winning the Competition for Customers is all about Managing your Resources for Optimum Output.  The Global Race for Dominance requires using every Assett to it's Greatest Potential and being at the Vanguard of Change.  The Company which Succeeds at Evolving to meet the Challenges of the Economics of Tomorrow will win the Great Contest through Effective Application of Innovation in Technology.

Oh, and this will involve Humans too.  We must not forget the human factor.  At least for a few more years, Humans are going to be integral.  And even afterwards, they are still going to be the main buyers of our product, whatever that is.

("A human resource professional is the voice of those people..." somebody actually approved that line.  You can't make this up.)

What exactly is the message here?  "Go out and develop some people.  People make great worker drones.  Plus there are so many of them, and more are being made every day.  Go out and get yours, you won't be sorry.  They work like crazy, and for no money down, and they are so amazingly replaceable too!"

So for now....use your humans!  Keep them working and smiling (but above all working.)  Help them form Team Networks which are never, ever off the clock (remind them that the sun is always shining somewhere on the planet- and that the company is, after all, global.)  Give them the electronics they need to communicate and work work work 24/7 to keep feeding the great machine which is the Only Thing That Matters.  Maybe show them some clips of people jumping off piers for some reason.  Use some inspiring music in the background, I don't know.

Bottom Line:  Humans are really important to Success.  They do the work, after all, and they spend the money.  For now.  We are working every day to limit the impact Humans have on market forces, we promise.  But until that golden age comes and we can eliminate the Human from the equation, here's some hypnotic, inspiring bilge about how much we really love the whole Human element, seriously.  Now, get back to work while we finish eliminating your jobs!

Because you can't spell iPhone X without "I"

(Or "look everybody, two braying jackasses.  You can tell them apart by the fact one of them has a mouth that takes up half her face, and the other one has a horn!")

I used to be able to snark on cell phone ads for casually promoting self-absorption, but there doesn't seem to be any purpose to using that angle any longer, does there?  Nowadays every phone ad features people using their phones to act like little idiots determined to show the planet what levels of pointless, frivolous, time-wasting nonsense they can reach using their pretty new toys.

I can't even remember the last time I saw a cell phone commercial which featured two people TALKING.  Does this even happen anymore?  Instead we've got lonely, isolated cocoon people playing games, watching movies, and - this is the really big trend- lovingly taking pictures of THEMSELVES that they can edit JUST SO to create the perfect level of lighting before they store that photo and take another one.  Or maybe they actually send that photo out to people- "hey, remember me, we used to get together and hang out before I became a socially retarded hermit and fell in love with doing stupid things by myself with my phone."

Oh but please, good people, go out and spend a thousand bucks on this thing so you can take portrait-quality selfies and then pose them with singing emojis.  It will so enrich your life and the lives of people who used to be around you.  But could you do me a favor?  Stop bitching about the cost of college or stagnant salaries.  You've got money to throw away on this stupid crap?  I don't want to hear it.

Not a lot of "Growing Up" going on in this Samsung Ad

So for the last nine years this sullen doofus's entire life has been defined by his regular progression from Perfectly Good Phone to Even Better Phone.  In between he walks around with a permanent sneer stitched to his face which is softened once a year when he opens a box and gets his Slightly Different Update.  Then it's back to being the guy with the most punchable face in commercials- except that he's got some competition from the guy waiting on line at the Apple store, who looks like he's on the verge of starting a rumble with the Samsung devotee.  Do these guys take their phones too seriously, or what?

I guess the message here is that this guy once "fell for the hype" that went along with the introduction of every new Apple phone.  He used to be one of those losers standing in line to trade in perfectly good but Oh So Yesterday phones for the New Shiny Thing from Apple so they would show well for their friends and besides, what's money for anyway?  But now he's Matured because he updates his Samsung equipment at the same frentic pace?  So it's all about not standing in line?

And at the ad's conclusion our Hero gets yet another new phone, which he uses to write Looky What I Can Do With What I Just Got to any friends he may have left.  Congratulations, you morose little douchenozzle.  You're satisfied with your electronics and will remain that way possibly for several months.  What a great way to go through life.

Oh, and we aren't putting together IBMs for a dollar an hour in Southeast Asia. There's that, too.

Here's what it says in the video description: "Commutes. Meetings. Microwave lunches. You deal with it all not just for a paycheck, but because you actually like what you do. "

And the actual dialogue of this disgustingly whiny First World Problems ad doesn't get any better:

"Another day of work. Another round of all this" ("all this" being a broken rolling suitcase and someone eavesdropping on your screen on the crowded bus- hey buddy, this isn't your living room. Doing something private? Do it somewhere private.)

"Why do you do it? Why do you put up with it?" Um, because Capitalism? Because for 99 percent of us "putting up" with work is the only way we can make the money needed to participate in the economy by buying food and clothing, paying rent or mortgage, and all those other things kind of necessary so we don't die? That's why pretty much all of us "put up with it" ("it" being the little annoyances that are always portrayed as crippling hassles in commercials aimed at us First Worlders.)

"It's not just a paycheck. You actually like what you do." Sure, I do. Some of us do. A lot of us don't. But that's completely beside the point, because whether we like what we do or not, we still have to do if we want to function and survive in our Capitalist society. So I'll congratulate myself for actually liking my job, and anyone else who also likes their job. But that's just a bonus. We may work AND like what we do, but we have work. Almost all of us. So spare me the attempt at Prager U-level Yay Work hypnotic suggestion, please.

The rest of us this proto-Fascist 71 seconds of crud is all about how IBM is doing stuff to make us more innovative and above all more productive in our work, which I guess is supposed to involve sitting around with a crowd of scruffy millenials looking at screens and then staring at clothes in storefront windows (creating new fashions wasn't possible before IBM did something? Huh?) And in the end, we are eternally grateful for the job we go to whether we love or not because It's Better than Starving and here's some inspiring Italian opera music that doesn't deserve to be used to pitch International Business Machines to convince me that despite living in an era and society which would seem like paradise to pretty much anyone living anywhere else at any other time in human history Life Is Kind of a Pain Except What an Awesome Job I Have. WTF-ever, IBM.

The REAL outrage in this "interracial" Taco Bell $5 Cravings Box Ad

It's not that it features a white girl with a black boyfriend.  The sad little morons with their brains and other body parts buried firmly in the past have a hard time dealing with that, but seriously, it's 2018.  Who gives a damn that white people date black people?  As long as her grandfather doesn't want to implant his personality into that guy through complicated brain surgery, nobody should have an issue with this.

It's not even that this slim young woman is eating her boyfriend's food.  I am going to be a bit sexist here, so go ahead and flame me if you want- when I was in my late-teens and early-twenties, I could easily wolf down this stuff, burp, and go for ice cream.  No problem.  I had a Buy One Get One Free coupon at Wendy's once when I was in college and sat down at a booth and ate two "Big Classics," two orders of french fries, and two sodas in one sitting.  Because I was a 19-year old male.  My wife had a very healthy appetite but she was also very athletic; I knew where those calories were going.  I just can't see this little thing packing away all that greasy food.

And it's not that her boyfriend just left a box of food sitting on the table while he went off to do...something.  Is that stuff even warm?  Did he microwave it after bringing it back from Taco Bell?  Why isn't it steaming?  So it's cold?  The only thing I want to eat less than Taco Bell is cold Taco Bell.

And it's not that two people who look like they are barely in their twenties seem to be living in an enormous, well-furnished house - what the hell is it with the people in TV land, they seem to think these places are handed out like voter registration cards at the DMV.  What, are these two kids investment brokers just out of High School?

No, I'm going to focus on something else entirely.  Some years back, Taco Bell was purchased by Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Or KFC was purchased by Taco Bell.  Or they formed some kind of partnership to share building space.  Whatever, I've posted before about the Magic Overflowing KFC bucket that appears in every Greasy Chicken for Whole Family ad.  Well, at the beginning of this commercial, we see the young woman opening the $5 Cravings Box like she expects to find a pearl necklace inside.  Then we see what's in the box from her point of view and DON'T EVEN TRY TO TELL ME THAT FOOD FIT IN THAT BOX WITH THE LID CLOSED.  Don't EVEN go there.

Hey, I just noticed that this ad features a white girl in a relationship with a black guy.  How progressive.  I bet some people have a real problem with that.  Because there are still a lot of losers out there.  If they weren't so blinded by their stupid retrograde attitudes, they might have noticed that TACO BELL IS LYING ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT'S FOOD.  Which is infinitely more important.