TDAmeritrade's shameless, manipulative exploitation of a shameless, manipulative song

 

Because I'm afraid I'll forget, I just have to spotlight one of the YouTube responses to this commercial which lets us know that Mr. Chapin's estate is very grateful that this song was used in this ad.  Yes, I'm quite certain that Mr. Chapin's heirs appreciate the royalty money.  Other than that, I'm not at all certain that Mr. Chapin would be thrilled to see his cloying tear-jerking mess of a song being used to pitch TD f--ing Ameritrade.

Now that that's out of the way, we see that this is one of those ads that has nothing to do with any product but instead is designed only to elicit feelings of warmth toward a particular company.  "Awwww....look at that dad being involved with his kid!  Awwww...I remember this song, which is about a father who neglected (worked for a living to keep a roof over his head) his kid!  Awwww...the company that bought the rights to use this music must really, really love dads who really, really love their kids!  I should invest with them, maybe!"

Oh seriously, gag me.  This commercial features maybe ten three-second scenes from eighteen years of a father's life with his son, including baby-holding time that son will NOT remember or appreciate later.  Are these three-second scenes representative of the guy's relationship with his son?  Or are they the rare highlights of 18 years in which the dad was essentially absent (the rare highlights that this guy images reflect the kind of awesome dad he was/is, while if the son looked at this commercial would think "yeah, I guess that ten times over the course of 18 years, dad and I did stuff together, but what about the great majority of the time when he was nowhere to be seen?")  Also, if this IS an accurate portrayal of his life as a father, so what?  Being a father is Optional.  This guy chose to be a father.  He's just doing what decent fathers should do.  This ad suggests that this guy should be up for a Nobel Prize because he held his son when he was a baby and played catch with him and took him out for a burger on occasion.  

And finally...this is, in the end, a commercial for TDAmeritrade, a company which in all of it's other ads feature people staring at stock analyses on laptops and cellphones or sitting in coffee shops or "green rooms" chatting away with greasy analysts about how to spend more time obsessing over money.  No kids to be seen, anywhere.   So what's with the mixed messages?  Are guys supposed to spend time with their kids, or are they supposed to be spending every waking moment manipulating their money?  I know which one yanks the heartstrings, but I also know which one signs up the customers.  Which is why this particular ad is the outlier. 

Ocrevus declares war against biology. I guess.

 

This is exactly like those stupid "Stand Up To Cancer" commercials I used to see- and actually commented on more than a decade ago.  You know, the ones where random people (and Lance Armstrong) would stand up and stare at the camera and challenge cancer to a fistfight, or something. 

This really weird anthropomorphizing of a disease always struck me as being weird.  I have rheumatoid arthritis.  My specialist never suggested to me that RA was "out to get me" and it was "me against RA" or that shooting up with Humira twice a month was my way of "fighting back" against RA, maybe because he's an adult and I'm an adult and he realized that to describe my condition and it's treatment in that manner would be treating me like a child.  Instead, he just told me that Humira can aid in controlling the symptoms of RA.  He didn't describe RA as a monster that had invaded and was determined to take over my body and "control me."   And I'm grateful that he didn't because I prefer to take my doctor seriously.

To the best of my knowledge, diseases don't exist to challenge us or knock us off our pedestals as the Most Awesomest Living Things Ever.  They don't exist for any purpose at all, and they aren't thinking at all, let alone thinking of ways to bring us down.  To think otherwise requires a level of self-importance even I can't obtain.

On the other hand, if phrases like "Win The Fight Against COVID" and "Defeat COVID" and "It's Us Against COVID" convince the roughly one-quarter of the American population currently determined to let Stupid enslave them (and, more importantly, make life difficult for the rest of us,) then I say keep using them.  But I'm not going to stop thinking that this is all pretty stupid. 

Eventually, everyone gets their own SiriusXM channel. And here's the proof

 

The SiriusXM commercial advertising the channel "starring" this talentless one-trick pony whose one trick grew old and hackneyed more than a decade ago has him waxing poetic about how he was "discovered" after "entertaining" an audience of slack-jawed, tasteless yokels:  As he was walking off the stage, Ron Schneider and David Spade walked up to him and said he was an awesome talent.

Because if you want to send someone to judge a comedian's talent, you can't do better than...Rob Schneider and David Spade.  Seriously, if those two told me someone they heard at a comedy club was funny, I'd ask them how they could possibly know, having never approached Funny's zip code in their entire careers.  Rob Schneider and David Spade think you're funny?  Then the jury's still out as far as I'm concerned.  Seriously, when Daniel Lawrence Whitney told me that he was discovered by Schneider and Spade, I thought that he was just telling another joke- one much funnier than any I'd ever heard him tell before.   It's like someone boasting that Donald Trump told him that he had Class and Modesty. 

Personally, I wouldn't watch two minutes of this guy's exaggerated Jim Foxworthy routine if you paid me.  If anyone subscribes to SiriusXM to listen to this multi-millionaire pretend to be a hokey redneck, it's probably the same kind of person who watches Duck Dynasty and believes the stars of that show are just Reg'lar Folks Like You and Me and not the phony media products they are.  Personally, I think one 30-second commercial for this played-out no-talent more than fulfills my daily get-r-done quota.   

Lending Tree's Good Commercial with the Wrong Message

 

Sure you can see the punchline coming from a mile away, but this is still a pretty cute commercial featuring a guy admitting that he's put himself way over his head in debt in order to live a lifestyle society "expects" him to live because he's a white guy in Suburban America.  He's got the ridiculous house that everyone in commercials but very, very few people in real life have.  He's got a huge SUV and is an "upstanding member of society" (guy willing to throw money around in order to look far wealthier than he actually is) because he belongs to the local golf club.  And he's got himself a trophy wife who either has the brain of a canary because she's been conned into believing his BS or is as much in denial as her husband is. 

The problem is that this isn't a commercial for fiscal responsibility, it's a commercial for Lending Tree.  So after thirty seconds of this guy setting up the "I'm in debt up to my eyeballs" punchline, we get the even bigger joke that the "solution" to his problem is....more debt.  This after he tells us he can barely pay the finance charges on the debt he's ALREADY accumulated.  

This reminds me of those blank checks I still occasionally get in the mail from credit companies encouraging me to use them to pay off my debts and "consolidate" them into "one easy payment" of $217 per month for the rest of my life or so.  There's no end to banks, credit card issuers, etc. eager to buy up your debt so they can soak you for interest from now until the universe suffers from heat death.  But it's so obviously a dumb shell game that only the most desperate- or stupid- would ever fall for it.  I guess this guy qualifies, but seriously, buddy...the LAST thing you need is to buy into the idea that you can just borrow your way out of debt.  Do you think that you can wash yourself dry or binge-eat your way to a fitter body, too?  Because it's the same mentality. 

How about just living within your means?  Anyone do that anymore?

CashNetUSA is The Dumb

 

I've never been as happy about anything as this woman is to be taking out a loan to fix maybe thousands of dollars of water damage done to her roof.  She really looks like her day was made when the ceiling collapsed, drenching her husband, because apparently nothing gives her a thrill more than whipping out her phone and committing both of them to paying off a high-interest loan.  Just a couple of questions that don't involve questioning the mental state of a woman who beams from ear to ear simply because borrowing money is easy:

1.  Are you even going to call a carpenter, plumber, or any other professional to give you an estimate on how severe the damage is or how much it's going to cost?  Or is the plan to just borrow a certain amount of money and hope it's enough?  If the latter is the case, how did you go about buying that home- did you just borrow a massive chunk of money figuring "yeah, a house should cost this much?"

2.  You sure took out that loan fast.  It's like you just wanted to borrow money and were waiting for an excuse.  That's really weird.

3.  Do you guys NOT have homeowner's insurance?  Isn't that a legal requirement pretty much everywhere?  I can see jumping to file a claim, NOT to take out a loan.  

4.  You guys own a home, and the best option you can think of when you have an unexpected repair bill (and again, you don't even have a bill yet) is to use the same service people who DON'T have property they can use to get a SECURED loan use?  That would be like if I ignored the money I have in the bank and my credit cards and just toddled off to Aaron's to rent a tv, or if I ignored my driving record and sought car insurance from one of those by-the-month pay-through-the-nose barely-legal-coverage places.  What is the matter with you people?

Community Tax understands you deadbeats

 

"If you owe the IRS $10,000 or more...."

First, you don't owe "the IRS" anything.  You owe the American people $10,000.  Which means you owe your neighbors, your community, your friends, because you haven't been paying your fair share.  That "Freedom isn't Free" bumper sticker doesn't mean "Support the Troops By Putting a Bumper Sticker on Your Car and Voting Republican."  It means that it costs money to keep a stable society which includes infrastructure going.  And if you want to enjoy the benefits of that stable society, you have to pay your fair share.  And you haven't been, so

Second, stop shaking your head at those pieces of paper on your coffee table in your Suburban palace.  Shaking your head isn't going to make those pieces of paper- which I assume are friendly reminders that you live in a stable society and haven't paid your fair share- go away.  Neither is some scammy bs "Tax Service" which paints the Internal Revenue Service as an Evil Monster trying to Victimize your poor, innocent, All You Wanted Was To Not Pay Taxes and Also Not Face Any Consequences Self.  

Third, I don't care what the state of the economy is presently, and neither does this "service," because they use the same script whether we are in a recession, depression or boom times.  No matter what year it is or what the unemployment rate is or where the stock market is at, these commercials are always bleating about "these uncertain times" and "the current economic downturn."  Know why?  Because people who owe taxes always think times are bad.  It's like that old saw that a "Recession" is when your neighbor is out of work, and a "Depression" is when you are.  These ads target people who are living on the margins (usually due to stupid decisions like overpaying for cars and houses because I Want It and I have a Right to have It Right Now) and figured they could just save some money by not paying their taxes.  In other words, Stupid People who love to be told that their situation is Anyone's Fault But Theirs.  Telling them "times are really tough right now, we understand" is going to get a response because it implies that "everyone" is in the same boat, never mind that the vast majority of Americans actually pay their fair share even if it means doing without because they haven't figured out that Responsibility is for Suckers. 

Fourth, I hope all these people end up in jail.  I have a right to feel that way- I pay my taxes.  I pay my fair share.  I don't live off others and I have zero respect for anyone who thinks paying taxes just isn't something smart people should have to do if they want to use that money for something else.   I'm just weird that way.

Creditrepair.com; an easy go-to on a Sunday morning

 

There's a radio version of this ad running pretty much constantly on Sirius/XM which features some smarmy jackass pretending to quiz people on their knowledge of the importance of a good credit score.  He asks them what a "good credit score" is, and a woman guesses "600?" to which he mockingly replies, "sure, that's good, if you want to pay thousands of dollars in extra interest."  If you have a radio, you've probably heard this ad.  

Anyway, the host eventually asks a guy "does paying your bills on time improve your credit score?"  And guess what- when the guy answers "yes" the host responds "sorry, no."  Which breaks my rage meter, because as I've been preaching here for years, paying your bills on time, every time is the No. 1 way to keep your credit score high, or to improve it if it's not where you want it to be.  Creditrepair.com outright LIES to make it sound like your credit score is out of your control, so you need to use their "service."  It would be as if Optima Tax Relief told you that you CAN'T deal with your tax issues with the IRS on your own, instead of carefully telling you that you SHOULDN'T.  It's crossing a very fine line between Possibly True and Downright False and I wonder why the United States has such lousy consumer protections when it comes to misleading advertising.  (Actually I don't wonder; it's called Capitalism, cloaked with Buyer Beware with a nice coat of Ignorance is No Excuse.)  

So the idiot scam artist in these ads is basically telling his intended victims that they have no control over their credit score, which means it will be low, which means they'll never get that new car and house and vacation they "deserve," unless they hire this company which knows how to fix credit in ways that are unavailable to the intended victim, which is yet another lie.   Thanks for the material, Creditrepair.com.  You never disappoint.