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10 Ads The US Won't See
prostoalex writes "Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States. The Gucci G-Spot turned out to be too risque, video for Drug-Free America was deemed too disgusting, Internet's favorite Honda "Cog" commercial won't air due to the high prices for a 2-minute spot, and Japanese commercials with American actors have contracts preventing the companies to run the same ads in the US. AdAge provides a link to the pictures and video (Windows Media .ASF format, alas) of the 10 best unaired commercials." I can get the ASFs working under VLC.
I'm more interested in the ads that won't be shown in other countries because they are too "racy", "religiously offensive", etc. It's always fascinating to see how another culture rules out elements that we think are normal. The other way around is not so surprising, since we all watch the TV here all the time, and we know what shows and what doesn't on our own tv's.
Ultimately, I must agree that the "best" commercial is no commercial at all.
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don't welcome any new ads. The only good ad is the blocked/skipped ad.
Yeah, but I hate to break it to you: you're not the majority. How many non-football fans watch the SuperBowl each year because of the commericials? A lot. That's because it's the one time of the year that you can be guaranteed that advertisers are honestly trying to catch your attention. So much of the other advertisements are bland and uninteresting. They're just not trying.
I think as technologies like TiVo start to take off there is going to be more and more pressure placed on adverising companies to come up with innovative ads that people won't mind sitting through. The real pickle for these companies is constantly coming up with new ads that are entertaining and push the limits and still not offensive to the majority of the American public. When I was younger I often wondered why ads suck so much. Surely there are tons of witty people who could write clever ads! Why aren't they being given the chance? Well, as I grew older I started to realize that a lot of humor is actually borderline offensive to a lot of people. Or they're simply too slow to 'get' the joke. Humor is, of course, the cheapest way to construct an interesting commerical. Other ways include novel imagery but this takes more talent and, arguably, more money.
Anyhow, I'm thinking that in the next 5 years we're going to see an improvement in the quality of advertisements to the point that they start to become entertainment in their own right. If companies do not do this, their ads are simply going to get blocked/skipped by an increasingly dissatisfied viewing public.
GMD
watch this
And Peter Fischli and David Weiss's "the way things work" is a blatant rip off of anything Rube Goldberg did (http://www.rube-goldberg.com/ ). At least credit the originator of these contraptions and not some other imitator.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Ultimately, I must agree that the "best" commercial is no commercial at all.
TV Programming has come to the point where the shows themselves are simply vehicles for product placement.
Look at all the coca-cola and ford positioning in the American Idol show for example of extreme product
placement.
I'd rather see a good well-done commercial than another half hour of typical drek television any
time. The expense per unit time of the commerical
is hundreds of times more than the show, especially
if the show is animated or syndicated.
Then again, I'd rather watch a Seinfeld rerun than a new episode of that stupid P. Hilton moron any time.
I was under the impression that the Honda "Cog" commercial wasn't released in the US was because the car which was being advertised was a UK-only model!
Who cares what model they showed? They're advertising their build quality.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
My grandmother got married a month before she graduated from highschool and had to keep it a secret or they would hav expelled her because she might corrupt the other girls. Whatever. To this day we segregate girls who get pregnant in highschool like they had some sort of communicable disease. And we still get our panties in a twist because the someone might want to marry someone who has the same genetals as them.
The USA is incredably sexually screwed up.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Screw "good ads" which loosely translates to an amusing joke, pretty people/landscapes, and appeals to emotion.
Show me some facts. Tell me why your product is better than your competitors. Show me a good price.
I'm not holding my breath, a fact-based advertising model would kill so many popular brands and empower consumers it wouldn't even be funny.
"Ads will HAVE to become better very soon"
Apparently you missed some of the finer points of this bit here. Why make better commercials when you can redefine the medium to require viewing of commercials? Think "Disney DVD."
We already have the "broadcast bit" in our flavor of ATSC now, what's to stop some new standard including a "no channel surfing bit?" It would allow broadcasters to charge even more to advertisers, which they would then argue would enable more/better shows. Why wouldn't Congress let this happen?
To this day we segregate girls who get pregnant in highschool like they had some sort of communicable disease.
Stupidity can spread like a plague. Unwed highschool-age mothers are flagrantly displaying their stupidity. I wouldn't want a teenage crack addict spending time with my kids either.
And we still get our panties in a twist because the someone might want to marry someone who has the same genetals as them.
It's not possible. You can't marry someone of the same gender anymore than you can murder a dead man. The meaning of the word prevents it from happening.
The USA is incredably sexually screwed up.
Yes. Because somewhere along the line, people stopped saying "That is wrong", everything is acceptable and you're a bigot if you don't go along with it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
... or betray that women like their breasts sucked.
That's because you have less free speech. Like when you try and call the Prince gay in a newspaper. To a US point of view those restrictions are abhorrent.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
As with most people who try to justify their subjective opinions, your arguments have very little objective substance.
? opt ion=article&news_id=75), so even if you are right about it being stabalizing, you still have not shown any evidence to suggest homosexual couples are different.
"Actuarial data shows that male-female married couples cause cause less loss for insurance companies, so guess what...They get better rates. "
While it's true that married couples get better rates and may even cause less loss, I'm not sure how this applies to your argument against homosexuality. I don't suppose you have evidence to suggest that male-male or female-female unions cause more loss, do you? All you've shown is that married couples cause less loss than single individuals.
"Marriage (as it currently exists) is a stabilizing force in society"
"stabalizing force" is a rather subjective phrase, don't you think? Stabalizing by whose standards? I mean, divorce rates have generally hung around the same amount (between 40 and 50 percent). Doesn't seem that stabalizing to me. Besides, a recent article published by the University of Washington suggests that homosexual couples have a similar rate of relationship dissolution compared to heterosexual divorce rates (
http://web.psych.washington.edu/news/index.php
Of course, what you really meant to say was that it was destabalizing for you since you don't like seeing men in love with other men, right?
"the government has to spend less money in housing and rehabilitating prisoners when society is stable."
That statement is a no brainer, but again I ask to see your evidence that homosexual couples somehow cause more instability. The most frequent instability I can think of are the crimes commited against them by bigots, but I hardly think it's fair to blame homosexuals for that.
"Married couples have children,..."
Homosexuals can adopt children...