Television Commercial Plays Havoc With Meaning Of Common Expression
Geico's "Rhetorical Questions" ad campaign has never been my favorite. Not even among the various rarely-amusing ad campaigns the insurance company has been concurrently running over the past few years. (I guess the cavemen ones would be my favorites? If only because of the one where the cavemen pull up on their motorcycles to the song that goes, "Don't wanna hurt you/Try not to mess with your feelings…" I kinda like that one. That song is by a Swedish band called the Sounds, apparently.) But as lame as all those ads have been, this latest one takes the cake.
"Could switching to Geico really save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance," asks the announcer we've seen ask that question so many times before, in his mock hard-boiled detective voice. Then, answering himself, "Does it take two to tango?"
To illustrate for us that, yes, it takes two tango, the commercial makers then show us a silly video of three people clumsily trying to dance the tango together. So we can see that the tango doesn't work very well with three people dancing it together. Clearly, it would work better if there were only two of them.
Except that's not what that expression means! No one ever says, "It takes two tango," to get across the idea that there are too many people trying to do something at once. That would be, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," or, even more appropriately, "Two's company, three's a crowd."
"It takes two to tango," means that the thing you're talking about can not be done by just one person. As a quick visit to Wikipedia, or Eric Hirsch's The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002) would have told the Geico ad copywriters:
"It takes two to tango is a common idiomatic expression which suggests something in which more than one person or other entity are paired in an inextricably-related and active manner, occasionally with negative connotations. The phrase recognizes that there are certain activities which cannot be achieved singly—like arguing, fighting, making love, dancing the tango."
But they couldn't have not known that, right? Everybody knows that. Is it just that they loved the bit where three people are dancing the tango so much, that they decided, "To hell with making any sense…"? Is the joke supposed to be on them, the ad guys? Like, "Look how dumb we are!"? Or, "Look how unafraid we are to look stupid!"? I don't get it. (Maybe I'm the stupid one?) But how many people must have had to green-light this? How did it actually get on air?
What's going on with the world?
Yes. Thank you.
Bravo, sir. And because I have an unfortunate propensity to obsess over such things, I have to point out that another ad in this series hinges on the rhetorical question "Does a woodchuck chuck wood?" after which we see a painfully unfunny clip of a hick farmer yelling at the rodents, who are indeed gaily chucking his wood* into a nearby body of water. But of course the expression comes from the nonsense riddle "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Apart from the homonyms and the assonant rhymes, the whole point of the query is that woodchucks CANNOT FUCKING CHUCK WOOD! That is WHAT THE CONDITIONAL VOICE SIGNIFIES, ILLITERATE GEICO AD HACKS!
Thank you. I feel much better now.
*This phrase is not, in fact, intended as a sexual euphemism
Ha! Right! I'd always disliked the woodchuck one just for its unfunniness. But, you're right: similarly nonsensical, too. So that ad is in fact saying, "No, switching to Geico could not save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance." Very well then, ad writers, I will not switch to Geico.
Seriously people? Okay, forget the faulty logic or translation of a saying. Yes, bad show there lads. However, fake furry animals chucking bits of wood. Funny. Just visually funny. Now if they actually had furries chucking wood. Well, funnier…LAYERS.
I'm guessing that what they really wanted to use was, "Does a bear shit in the woods?" and this was the best substitute they could come up with, because it has the word "wood" in it.
Heh, "Wood"…
One cannot argue with the logic of this post.
Just because you didnt get the joke doesnt mean they dont know what the expression means. And just bc it is a joke doesnt mean it is funny. You wanna be an ad guy dont you? Tissue? Crybaby
Wait. What is the joke? Seriously, if I'm missing something, please explain. I'd love to know.
Mostly it seems like the joke is to take some common phrase and turn it into some absurd scenario that draws its humor from interpreting the phrase in a much too literal way, like a bird-in-the-hand sculpture being evaluated at antiques road show and found to be worth "two in the bush" (obviously the real meaning of this phrase is that it's better to have a less valuable thing than to have the mere potential of getting a more valuable thing), or a pig getting a ride with his friend's mom and yelling "wheeee" the whole way home (in this phrase the 'wee wee wee' was supposed to be an imitation of the sound little pigs actually make, not like the 'wheee' noise humans make when having fun on a roller coaster), or woodchuck vandals wasting good wood by "chucking" it into a lake (in this phrase 'chuck' is actually supposed to mean…well, actually I have no idea).
The Abe Lincoln one is kinda funny.
Agreed. I like that actor's stuttery pause…
Oh, thank you! This has been a low-level, persistent irritant for weeks. All better now.
I just wonder Mike McGlone ever thought he'd end up as second fiddle to an animated gecko when he did The Brothers McMullen. His hair is just impossible. (P.S. I like the pig commercial, if only for the resigned expression on the mother/driver's face.)
Mike McGlone is the Geico guy?!? a;sldkfajfa;sljf
(P.S. Me too. Sometimes really dumb = funny.)
I can't believe even one other person has been as irritated by the faulty logic of this ad as I also have, much less several! Thank you so much, Dave Bry!
My guess is that they originally tried to show some one doing the tango alone. Then some one (the client perhaps) didn't think it was very compelling to have a guy running around doing the tango by himself. It would take a bit of comedic effort to pull that off … and maybe they weren't getting it on film.
Is the 'deep voice' guy supposed to sound like Rod Serling…?
I appreciate your ability to put this frustration into words. Last night I was trying to explain what was so wrong with the commercial, and all I could come up with was "but that's not what that means!" Geico should stop making so many ad campaigns and concentrate on making their insurance not suck.
Besides, Dean Winters (the mayhem guy from the Allstate commercials) is the nicest guy I ever met on a film set, and those commercials are well done, damn it. They've got my business.
I am also a fan of Mr. Winters. ("McFADDon!") And all things mayhem. So I like those commercials, too.
Yes! Those Allstate commercials are so great. Really creative, too, which is rare these days. Long live the Beeper King!
Recalculating!
THANK YOU. Every time this commercial comes on, I yell this very complaint at the TV.
How can you not enjoy those commercials? They are brilliant. No, it's not literal. They obviously know what the damn phrase mean. But it's random and weird and just slightly off enough to get your attention. You are always gonna remember those commercials, and that they are for Gieco. Besides, they are having some fun with it. Better then the same crappy beer/car/ED treatment adverts we constantly get.
That.
Is not.
What random means.
The "bird in hand" one is kind of funny. PBS has made a fool of itself with "Antiques Roadshow."
I also like the drill sargeant makes a bad therapist spot.
THANK YOU AWL.
Also, while we are mad at non-logical things: In his 2003 piece, "Pimp Juice," noted social critic Nelly is upset that "they [women] only want me [him; Nelly] for his Pimp Juice". He explains the lengths women will go to to obtain his Pimp Juice, and the trials which they must endure in order to sip said juice.
And then he explains what the "pimp juice" is:
"Pimp Juice is anything [which] attract[s] the opposite sex / It can be money, fame, or straight intellect."
So therefore, by Nelly's own definition and the "Women only want me for any of the reasons for which women want me." Why, then, is Nelly so upset?
Nelly is not a social critic but a Quinean.
I thought it was an obvious additional meta-joke that they're misconstructing the idiom? Maybe I'm giving them too much credit?
Shhhh! Yeah, I don't understand why people are so confused by this. If they are not confused, and are instead put off, I still don't understand why.
ALSO, one person attempting to tango could have been a whole lot funnier. This is one of those short-sighted advertising concepts where they ran out of iterations that worked about three ads in, and kept going anyway. The sad thing is, the only reason the idea stopped working is that they stopped thinking hard enough about it.
"Tiny House" is the best-ever Geico commercial. All the rest are mildly irritating at best.
Right. Why did they not just do it with one person dancing the tango? It seems simple enough. It's really confusing.
It's pretty hard to argue with the logical purity of buying car insurance from a lizard.
I think I see an ad opportunity for the Awl network: Geritol. Perhaps package it with the MLA and copy of "Humor for the Anal" (which would consist mostly of New Yorker cartoons.)
Why, did you know that there were no motion picture cameras during Abraham Lincoln's time in office? This commercial is balderdash! (Other things in ads we must take issue with: pigs can't hold pinwheels, dogs can't serve beer, Doritos can't resurrect grandpa.)
As another person pointed out, obviously Geico doesn't care what the original intent of the phrase was.
And "You dang woodchucks, quit chucking my wood" is one of the funniest lines in advertising at the moment.
If you wanted to take true umbrage at a misused phrase, why not go after Axa's "800 pound gorilla in the room." Because, a) the thing in a room that everyone's trying to ignore is AN ELEPHANT and b) the 800 pound gorilla is a thing that can't be ignored because it's violently ripping your head off.
You fail, Axa.
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("I love you whenyouareLOUD.")