Nissan can't give us a single good reason to buy a Rogue. So we get this instead.

 

It's hard to imagine ad actors acting less naturally and more stilted than the ones featured in this ad for....well, let's hold that thought.

I mean, look at them.  Zombie Mom with the stupid smile frozen to her face just keeps talking to her car, asking it to do things she either doesn't really need done (does she really not know where the soccer field is?) or it can't do (what does she mean, "take us to the soccer field?"  It's not a self-driving car.  All it can do is give directions.  Guess what, Zombie Mom?  GPS is available on pretty much every car nowadays)  Oh, and she asks it to remind her to order pizza- something she could have asked Google to do from her phone.

Meanwhile, that stupid kid in the back just keeps laughing at something- from what we see, she seems to be laughing at her mother's constant commands for Google to remind her to blink every few seconds so she doesn't forget.  The kid looks to be a preteen, but not a toddler, and only a very small toddler would find her mother talking to Google and get responses funny.  Even a very small toddler would only find it funny two or three times. 

Let's get back to that first, interrupted thought.  What is this an ad for?  The only thing that is being sold is Google.  Nothing this woman does can't be done using her phone.  Why would anyone buy a 40k car from a rapidly failing company to get the exact same voice-activation assistance available from a refurbished Samsung phone available on Amazon?  And there's absolutely nothing else being pitched to us here- just the super-convenient, and apparently Super Fun, Google On Demand system which might have been revolutionary back in 2015 but is about as groundbreaking as SiriusXM today.

Someone please, tell me what I'm missing here.

What's in your wallet? Debt.*

 

In 2013, the average credit card interest rate was 13%, and anything above 19.9% was a sign that you had run into trouble paying bills and had a poor credit rating.  Today, the AVERAGE credit card interest rate is 26%- exactly double the average rate in 2013.  What happened?

It turns out that Capital One Bank is the main culprit.  In 2016, the world's largest extender of unsecured credit decided to experiment with higher interest rates, gradually raising interest on balances from 13% to 17% to 19% over the course of five years while also investing in glitzy commercials featuring actors, comedians and sports figures pimping the benefits of "cash back rewards," with a special emphasis on the use of credit to small business owners.  

The result?  Use of credit cards exploded even as the cost of using those cards rose.  Capital One had it's answer:  Americans like to spend, can easily be convinced that spending is a positive activity and even analogous to investment, getting one percent "cash back" is worth any amount of spending, and interest rates are basically meaningless.

It didn't hurt that wages continued to remain stagnant when matched up against inflation during the period 2013-present.  To continue to purchase the same thing year after year, more and more people must rely on unsecured loans from banks like Capital One.  And it's so easy- no conversations with judgmental people at the bank, not even a phone call.  Just take out that piece of plastic and you've got your gasoline, groceries or whatever else you want.

Today American adults carry an average of $7200 in credit card debt, $1.17 trillion in all, and that number is going up every quarter.  Much of that debt is on credit cards carrying interest rates of over 30%.  The entire economy is built on this debt- money that is PROJECTED to arrive through electronic transfer to Capital One and other banks- and on this debt GROWING every single year.  Every new product is presented to the public in the hopes that consumers are willing to go into a LITTLE MORE debt in order to possess it.  Which makes advertising more aggressive every single year- aggressive and expensive (you think these celebrities do these ads for free?) 

All of which keeps me busy with this blog.  Which is something, I guess.

*oh, and Fake Status.  Access to over 1300 Airport Lounges?  Who gives a damn?

Doritos Tells On Itself- and proves my previous point- in it's Superbowl Ad

 

1.  How did Doritos tell on itself?  Well, this particular snack "food" might just be the most engineered calorie delivery system in human history.  Everything about it- the shape, the size, the color (both of the chip and the bag,) the levels of crispiness and saltiness- is the result of literally DECADES of laboratory and focus group testing.  The final product is almost flawlessly designed to keep the consumer reaching into the bag until every single speck of every single chip is gone, and to keep the brain demanding more in a very short period of time.  It's edible heroin, basically, which lights up the pleasure center of the brain like a freaking Christmas Tree while providing nothing of value to it or any other organ (but certainly contributing to the growth of adipose tissue.)

So when we get a minute-plus of "this stuff is a scientific miracle" from a comedian who hasn't done anything of value since The Spoils of Babylon more than a decade ago.  

2.  How did this commercial prove a previous point?  Well, the week before the Big Game I noted that two things we could definitely expect from the ads were that they would feature familiar faces- old actors or comedians we had not seen for a while,*  and that they would be wildly overproduced.  This ad checked both boxes.  

*the most egregious example of nostalgia bait was, of course, the awful "homage" to When Harry Met Sally.  I don't think I can even touch that one; it was SO cringey, SO obvious, and SO uncalled for I think I might just have to leave it alone.  Even I have my limits.

Frank's Red Hot Iron To My Side

 

This monstrosity is running 2-3 times PER COMMERCIAL BREAK on ESPN this morning.  I think that constitutes a war crime.  And it doesn't help that idiots in the comment section seem to believe that the "song" (being very charitable) being used was originated by one of the most overrated hit films of the 1980s.  I mean, come on, people. 

My Superbowl Party Survival Guide

 

During the at least fifty percent of the four hour Commercial Marathon With Brief Interruptions to Show a Football Game for Some Reason I will be wearing my air pods and will have my workout mix ready to go.  I'll be watching and listening to that actual sporting event that doesn't involve inserting Product Brain Worms through overproduced visuals and familiar names placed in intensely unfunny situations marginally connected to a fast food chain or insurance company, but when the ads start, I'll be cranking this mix up and heading outside for a six-minute walk.  

Hear that, Taco Bell, State Farm, Budweiser and whatever studio is getting ready to dump the next $300 million blockbuster in to the dying theater industry?  You've lost me before you've even started.  I'll probably comment on several of your ads later, but I won't be watching when you want me to- when you are dropping your eight-figure investment into the most depressing Sunday evening of the entire year that doesn't include a Yankee World Series Win.  

Oh, and this goes for the obligatory "Jesus Gets You" commercial.  Jesus doesn't get me.  I'm too fast for Jesus.

(Go Eagles.  Please.)

Taco Bell and the real cost of "Cravings"

 

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As Joe Friday would say, "Just the facts:"

The "Delux" Taco Bell "Cravings Box" (seriously, gag me) delivers this level of damage to your internal organs and blood:

110 milligrams of Cholesterol (37% of the RDA for an adult.)

70 grams of Fat (90% of the RDA for an adult.)

21 grams of Saturated Fat (105% of the RDA for an adult.)

2,750 milligrams of Sodium (120% of the RDA for an adult.)

And all at the service of satisfying a "craving" which may leave you satisfied for a few hours before you are ravenously hungry again because that "food" from Taco Bell had NO ACTUAL NUTRITIONAL VALUE AT ALL.  Leaving you a sad combination of sick, hungry and "craving" for more of the same.  

Seems to me that I just described an Addiction, not a "Craving."  

I thought drug dealing was illegal.  Then I see Taco Bell commercials and remember Oh Yeah, Capitalism.  Big Pharma is loving this.  

This Taco Bell Commercial is like that shower of meteorites 66 million years ago...

 

...you know, the shower of meteorites that foreshadowed the massive rock that ended the age of the dinosaurs.  

Stay with me on this:  A week from tomorrow most Americans will be engaged in the annual Watching of the Overproduced Overhyped Commercials Occasionally Interrupted by a Football Game.  All of the ads will have three things in common:  they will feature people we are expected to recognize and WILL recognize if we are In Tune With the Modern Era, they will be about thirty seconds longer than necessary, and they will have nothing to do with the actual product which may or may not be featured in the commercial.  I think this one features a Social Media personality- that's what is suggested in the comment section- but I don't know, nor do I care, because I'm not In Tune with the Modern Era.

A depressingly large population seems to enjoy these commercials; I'm even told that there are people who only watch the game FOR the commercials.  Personally, I think that they are by far the worst thing about the Superbowl and the main reason why I often don't even watch the game.  When I go to Superbowl parties, commercials are times to step out of the room, look at my phone, maybe try to engage in a conversation (which usually doesn't work because most people there want to take in the commercial.)  Actually I just go for the food and because I feel like I'm required to engage in national rituals now and then and one day a year seems about right.  

As for Taco Bell- well, this stuff is crap but so are people obsessed with their social media presence, so I guess this kind of makes sense.  If you think that Taco Bell is "food" you probably think that having a "following" makes you a "celebrity" and therefore "important."  So stay addicted to ultra-processed grease, fat, carbs and Attention from Strangers; probably better for you than Meth, anyway.