Welcome to another in my series of critiques of award-winning radio commercials — those honored as “the best of the best” by the 2007 Radio Mercury Awards.
A few of the winners are good. Most are not. And some — including this one — deserve an extra special award:
First, listen.
They’re being clever, but they’re not at ALL selling the results of what they’re advertising.
They could tag this with, “…you still can save 20% off everything in the store at Sears, this weekend only.”
Or, “…You don’t have to be perfect to learn how to make big bucks stuffing envelopes at home.”
Naturally (i.e., stupidly) they end with two Calls To Action. Normally that’s a surefire way to lessen total response, but in this case the point is moot: The only measurable response this campaign generated was the award for the agency.
They spent their time and taxpayers’ money to show off. The kids they were supposed to be helping deserved better.
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I heard this one day in a network PSA break and could not imagine that, 1) this won a Mercury Award, and 2) that it passed muster from agency, producer, and client. This talent does a lot of CBS work (60 Minutes, Letterman spoofs). Uncle Sam wrote the check for this? Maybe I can deduct it my from taxes as a bad investment. 🙂
Put this one in the same pile as the agency ads that try to make the voice talent sound like the local on air personality, I GUESS in some feeble attempt to validate it by thinking the listener is stupid enough to think that the idiot hawking some lose weight while you sleep gel is ME.
Always the same puking voice..”Hey folks, we’ll get right back to the music but FIRST I wanna tell you about this amazing product…….” Do ad agency people think we all sound like Johnny Fever?
Another “brilliant” example in the never ending advertising philosophy that promoting stupidity is the way to sell product. Which means either the agency and the client think that the customer is too stupid to understand anything else, or the agency and the client are stupid.
Either way it’s just plain stupid.