Geico and Progressive

I never liked the caveman commercials from Geico, though at least the tagline tied into the general idea of so easy, even a caveman can sign up online, etc. The gecko is a silly play on words with Geico, and someone might be able to explain to me why the gecko has a cockney accent. But Geico has finally scraped the very bottom of the barrel with the plastic eyes. A pair of flat plastic googly eyes from a craft store sitting atop a couple small bundles of cash — the money you could be saving if you switched to Geico. Who is the target audience for this crap?




I like the Progressive girl just fine, but I think that series is getting ready to jump the couch.

Bring on the Super Bowl!

American Express

No video that I can find, but this commercial has been around for a while and I'm certain you will recognize it. It's all about how to use your Gold Points.

It is in three parts. The first part starts off with a young man from AmEx saying, "I love this one..." He goes on to describe a man trying to buy his fiancée an engagement ring, only to be humiliated when his credit card is rejected. Then his fiancée tells him to get an AmEx card. But the AmEx employee loves this one? Huh?

Part two is ok, a man uses his points to get advance tickets to the concert of the year. Fine.

Part three isn't as blatantly ignorant as part one, but it isn't very good. Is it really so romantic to fly to Italy just to order tiramisu, a very ordinary dessert that can be had at most Italian restaurants in the US?

I guess AmEx is now shooting for a part of the Visa/MC crowd, those folks who never could qualify for an AmEx card in the past. I wonder how deeply invested AmEx is in foreclosing on people's homes...

FreeCreditReport.com

It's been a while since I've bitched about a tv commercial, and this one just recently started to piss me off. Bearing in mind that I'm recently divorced from a selfish lying pos, this commercial just bugs me no end. At first I thought it was funny, but the more I see it, the more insidious it becomes.

He married his dream girl and he's whining because they can't go out and buy a house, so her family is putting a roof over his head. Um, has he looked at the prices of houses lately? What the hell is his idea of a dream girl, a sexy, rich, hard-working breeder/doormat who will support his and put up with his selfishness? She's doing laundry while he hangs with his homeboys and is in her way, and he wishes he was still a bachelor? So stfu and move out already! What a loser. And what a crappy message to send: I wasn't smart enough to really think things through before getting married, and she didn't either, so it's all HER fault??!?

There is an equally stupid ad with the guy driving around in a beat up AMC Gremlin (remember those?). In that one, he has no one but himself to blame for his bad credit, but it's still a poor commercial. He didn't know his credit was whack? How do you suppose you get bad credit, the bad credit fairy? Even the tune in this one isn't good.

Luckily, the pirate waiter commercial is able to be funny and make the point that you might want to keep an eye on your credit report without resorting to stereotyping or inanity.

Need A Moment?

Let us begin. Some TV commercials are good, some are stupid, and some are insulting. In the insulting group are some of the current crop of Twix commercials. I've linked to those I could find online.

The one that is pissing me off most shows some guy out drinking and partying with his buddies and getting home in the wee hours. His wife/girlfriend wakes up and, annoyed, asks if he is just getting home. He takes a moment with his Twix bar, then lies and says, no, he's going in to work early, and starts redressing. She says, poor baby, and he's off the hook. Nice. Lie to the bitch rather than just tell the truth. No doubt it's her fault he had to lie, after all, she's just going to make a scene, so why not take the easy way out? Why develop any integrity? Another one shows a baseball umpire flirting with two women instead of doing his job. I guess it's supposed to be funny.

Now I'll give them the fat booty commercial, that one actually is funny. She asks the impossible-to-answer-correctly question, and mumbling while chewing on his Twix bar suffices for a good answer. They've even got a slap scene from a soap opera on tv. Well done. And the laundry commercial is very cute, just the sort of situation you can imagine someone getting in, and for a change, the girl actually isn't the butt (no pun intended) of the joke. Hooray, Twix got one right. So what's up with the insulting and stupid ads? They've shown they can do better.