"Nobody's Perfect"

I tend to watch the same TV channels. Thus, I see the same commercials, over and over.

I wonder, at times, if ad agencies focus-test their ads before running them. Because here's one I would have nixed - Liberty Mutual. Now, somebody's paying big bucks to run these ads, and yet they're (I'm pretty sure) having the exact opposite effect of what the client intended.

Here's what I get from the ads:

PERSON: It's only a matter of time before you rip some guy's bumper off.

ME: So, I'm supposed to foot the bill for you, because you don't give a shit about the damage you've  done to my car, because, after all, nobody's perfect. Well, frankly, with your blase attitude, I will make a point of staying far, far away from your "driving skills". You're just a somnambulistic inch away from making me fork over my exorbitant deductible, all because I need to indulge your fatalistic mindset.

Not to mention the girl who names her car. What the hell?  And then she throws him over, willy-nilly, when she gets that big insurance check, after she's "bumped" somebody's fender.

Here's the deal, Liberty: I'm not buying what you're selling.

On the way home from work last week, I found myself behind a guy who was weaving precariously toward the right shoulder, then drifting into the left lane and back again. This was 2:30 in the afternoon! I couldn't get close enough to report his license number, because, well...I didn't want to get that close. I obviously couldn't pass him, due to the side-swiping potential. I'm guessing he had Liberty Mutual Insurance, because, you know, life just happens. It's nobody's fault, really. Oh, I killed you? Sorry, I guess.

He probably was wearing that same ill-fitting denim jacket that the sartorially-deficient woman in the commercial is wearing - because, like her, he has no sense of decency. Or sobriety.

On the plus side, however, speaking of insurance (and who doesn't like to speak of insurance?), I'm rather partial to the Geico ad with the motorcycles, because I knew - I just knew that wasn't some prefab "commercial tune" they slapped on there. And I was right. The song was too good.

And I found it! It's the Wallflowers, and it's called One Headlight:

So, in a nutshell, if I was shopping for insurance, I believe I would go with Geico. Because their songs are cool and they don't treat me like a scrunched-up piece of plastic.

So, there's your focus group.

Commercials

DVR's are a wondrous invention, aren't they? I hate to trot out the old "in my day" chestnut, but really, don't you find that commercials last longer now than the actual TV shows they interrupt?

Perhaps network channels feature more interesting ads, but in our house, we watch a lot of cable, and if it's not the "Act Now and Get Two For the Price of One!" stupid little quirky inventions that we didn't even know we needed, it's Fred Thompson beating us about the head, smiling eerily, telling us that we really need to get a reverse mortgage. Or William Devane, shouting, "Gold!" every seven minutes. (And c'mon! William Devane? From that eighties soap? At least Fred Thompson was in a good show.)

I find myself disappointed to realize I'm watching a live show and I can't fast-forward it. This, if for no other reason, is why people tune in to PBS. Honestly, we'll watch any sort of crap; English castle retrospectives, some guy hiking up a hill; just to not have our senses sullied by inane people shouting that we need to call in the next five minutes!

Seems to me that people all over this great land have begun to put their collective feet down. Oh, Nielsen knows it. Everybody pre-records shows now. It's completely skewing the Nielsen numbers. Plus, a lot of us watch shows online - whether it's Hulu or YouTube. Know what I do when Hulu sticks a commercial in the middle of a show I'm currently engrossed in? I flip over to a new window and do something more interesting to kill time. Try as you might to get me to buy an Audi, I'm busy playing Candy Crush Saga.

Look for the days of product placement. Some day, all the advertisers will suddenly catch on that we aren't falling for their incessant pleading that we (please, please!) rush out and purchase their product. I don't care how many cool indie songs they slap in there.

No, instead, we'll see Jethro Gibbs dabbing from a can of MinWax as he tidies up the boat in his basement. Sheldon Cooper will hold up a pair of Fruit of the Looms and tell us they're just like the ones his me-maw bought for him when he was a kid.

And frankly, that'd all be okay with me. I like a little entertainment to go along with my forced Madison Avenue servitude.

The only people I know who make even slightly entertaining ads anymore are the Geico folks. Their ad agency employs somebody with a strange, wondrous mind. First it was the little piggy, and now this:

You have to laugh, because it's so dumb. Don't we all like dumb? Yes, we do.