The Awl

Arch West, 1914-2011

Dave Bry — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:40:56 +0000

Anyone attempting to rob the grave of the late Frito-Lay executive Arch West will get the same unpleasant surprise as millions of Americans have when they've lifted up the cushions in the couch in the TV room while looking for quarters to do laundry or tip a pizza delivery guy. West, who died on Tuesday in Dallas at the age of 97, invented Doritos, and when he is buried this weekend, according to a statement issued by his daughter, his family will honor him by "tossing Doritos chips in before they put the dirt over the urn." (Also, though, in light of this Doritos commercial from a couple of years ago, there is the possibility that West could be faking his own death.)

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Am I The Only One Troubled By The Growing Omnipotence Of State Farm Insurance People?

Jim Behrle — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:00:47 +0000

It starts innocently enough. A dude gets a free sandwich from seemingly nowhere. On a plate. He hasn't even asked for a plate but he gets one anyway. Then his pals abduct a housepants'ed neighbor. Well, the viewer might raise an eyebrow but she herself doesn’t seem that bothered by it, this Girl from 4E. She even gives a pleased smile to the gent next to her. I mean, the power to be summoned and transported between apartments of a building must be frightening, but perhaps it leaves you a little giddy too. A sort of teleportation brand of Stockholm Syndrome. Like whoa, I'm euphoric from all that instantaneous movement. Headrush! Which might explain why 4E seems to like the attention. Then a Hot Tub crashes into a Dinner Table. Summoned like the woman and the sandwich, it nonetheless crashes violently, whereas both sandwich and woman landed gently. Do these magic teleportation powers deteriorate over the course of the commercial? Apparently the State Farm people are trafficking in some kind of difficult to master dark magick which is let loose upon our realm by the singing of their “magic jingle.” Do the singers of the so-called "Magic Jingle" lose control over the effects of singing the jingle as the commercial progresses? Who exactly is granting these powers? The State Farm claims inspectors? The Universe? And what on earth are those guys saying at the start of the commercial, anyway?: "...Snatching stuff takes..." Are these guys a room full of scruffy thieves? Should we really be granting wishes to rogue elements?

At this point with the world being pretty much a war-and-death-filled taco, shouldn't we be using the powers of the Magical State Farm Jingle for a greater good? "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There... With an End to the War in Afghanistan! And to Feed Everyone!"

Why if these powers exist are they being wasted—as they are in this commercial—on turning a hot guy into a sensitive guy into a hot guy with a "Dark Side."

By the way, that dude doesn't have a Dark Side. He's just a terrible person. And do ladies really call each other "dude"? Because I don't know. I use "dude" way too much. It needs to be banished from all vocabularies except those of cowboys and surfers.

What I've been able to glean from the commercials is that the powers of the State Farm "Magic Jingle" include: Teleportation, Reading Minds, Instant Creation of Any Object, Sudden Appearance of Somewhat Famous People. If a Superhero had these powers, they'd be Unstoppable. Superman would be turned instantly into a hot guy. Or Bob Barker would summon a new car on his head. These are worrisome powers that should not be granted to Insurance Companies to dole out willy nilly. Genies are Monsters! Not our friends! They grant our wishes to destroy us! And revel in the ironic payback our deepest desires inflict upon our lives.

But the most disturbing of all the "Magic Jingle" commercials may be the one where Buffaloes Attack! Are the guys in the car eating buffalo burgers and watching buffaloes at the same time? Well, of course buffaloes will react angrily to that! And attack your car! You're eating their mom! You callous jerks.

So the first singing of the jingle summons the State Farm guy. The second singing makes him all-powerful enough to transport everyone in the car hundreds of miles in a second. Later will they have to sing the jingle to retrieve their car? And turn their Buffalo burger into a live buffalo?

I really do want to believe that State Farm will be there when their customers need them. And not only to make somewhat attractive people supermodel attractive. But really help. Having your car messed up is rough. I've never owned a car, and don't have a driver's license—I just imagine it's terrible. I mean, the whole endeavor is terrible. But State Farm has decided to not just give great customer support: now they’re dabbling in the arcane arts. Dangerous business. With complicated consequences for all beings in our dimension. LeBron is not just playing the world’s tiniest violin for his friend, he might as well be playing it for all who are attached to the status quo of our reality.

Insurance commercials are 95% of the ads on TV. It is important that we buy insurance and never switch to another insurance company. I've always been uncomfortable with Omniscience and Omnipotence. It's kind of like trying to imagine Heaven and being like, it's Forever and Ever? That seems scarier than Death being forever and ever. Like how much golf can one play? Every Day, forever and ever? And will I always have to play with my grandfather, his grandfather, his grandfather, Elvis and Marie Antonette? What limits are there on the powers of the State Farm jingle? At some point will someone sing the jingle and say "With four-foot genitalia!" And there will be a big "Survey Says XXX" buzzer noise and the State Farm insurance lady will be like, "Sorry, we just can't do that." And then we will know the outer edges of this awesome power! Be careful out there, America! Don't get into accidents in your cars. And if you do, be careful what you wish for.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

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Science Will Capture Your Dreams

Dave Bry — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:00:24 +0000

So here is a terrifying new scientific advance: using electrodes surgically implanted in the brains of medical patients, a UCLA neuroscientist named Dr. Moran Cerf says he has successfully monitored people's thoughts.

As the BBC reports,

"Dr. Cerf makes his bold claim based on an initial study that he says suggests that the activity of individual brain cells, or neurons, are associated with specific objects or concepts. He found, for example, that when a volunteer was thinking of Marilyn Monroe, a particular neuron lit up. By showing volunteers a series of images, Dr. Cerf and his colleagues were able to identify neurons for a wide range of objects and concepts – which they used to build up a database for each patient. These included Bill and Hilary Clinton, the Eiffel Tower and celebrities. So by observing which brain cell lit up and when, Dr. Cerf says he was effectively able to 'read the subjects' minds'."

"We can sail with our imaginations and think about all the things we could do if we had access to a person's brain and basically visualise their thoughts," says Dr. Cerf, who hopes to first use the technology to build a machine that could read people's dreams.

Yes, just imagine it! And what could possibly go wrong? I don't suspect for a second that the government would get a hold of this technology (as if it hasn't already) and use it to suppress the citizenry. I mean, they've certainly always respected the privacy of our phone conversations.

And it certainly wouldn't be like Until the End of the World, when Max Von Sydow invents the same kind of machine Dr. Cerf is talking about, but then all everybody wants to do once they get hold of it is sit around with strap-on view-finder glasses over their eyes and play their own dreams back to themselves. And everyone gets addicted to it like heroin. (I always thought that was right. That would be exactly what would happen.) It definitely won't be like Strange Days, where people use it to make first person recordings of rapes and murders and then force the people they're raping and murdering to watch it happen while it's happening.

Even the writers of "Gilligan's Island" new the dangers inherent to reading the internal thoughts of others. Some things, we just don't want to know.

Most disturbing of all, perhaps, the ad department at Honda seems to already have obtained Cerf's "dream-catcher" machine, and used it on me to make commercials for their Odyssey minivan.

They've made versions for middle-aged people who want to have sex in the backseat of their vehicles, too. And for people who like bunny rabbits and baby deer.

But mostly, for me.

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Enjoy That Cheeseburger, Because It Could Be Your Last

Maura Johnston — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:50:08 +0000

Above, a new pro-vegetarian spot from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that's making explicit the link between fast-food consumption and heart disease. Like, really explicit: The corpse at the center the ad died gettin' his burger on, as evidenced by the Big Mac Of Death that remains in his hand while a woman weeps over his lifeless body. Leaving aside the obvious questions regarding the man's grip on his burger-sized deathtrap and the process of rigor, one must ask: Why is it always McDonald's that gets whacked by ads of this ilk? Surely one is more likely to keel over as the direct result of eating a Double Down, or, chowing his way through two feet of pizza. And it's not like McDonald's arches are the most visually appealing option for the kicker: A couple of tiny Burger King crowns would look so cute superimposed over the dead dude's feet at the very end of this spot! You could even add the tagline "He had it his way... and then he died," and you'd have a goldmine.

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What I Learned From Watching 180 Deodorant Commercials

Joe Berkowitz — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:40:34 +0000

People have been wondering for a long time what comes after anti-marketing marketing. When commercials began to target the people who hated commercials-these attempts were almost indistinguishable from SNL spoofs-it seemed like we'd reached the final frontier. Then there were stealth viral vids and customized social media ads straight out of Minority Report. But it wasn't until this week that somebody finally put it all together. I won't insult the effectiveness of this campaign by pretending you don't know what I'm talking about.

It all started with a Super Bowl commercial, one that has since gone on to rack up, on Youtube alone, over 13 million views. Old Spice used sharp humor, a snappy pace and a post-modern self-awareness designed for maximum appeal to... pretty much everybody. While the chiseled, shirtless Old Spice Guy is ostensibly addressing female viewers, the tagline of the ad campaign is "Smell like a man, man." (It's the perfect mixed address: as with many other Procter & Gamble products, the marketers know that a significant portion of "men's products" are chosen and physically purchased by women.) More commercials soon followed, including the completely bananas "Flex" spot, which goes full meta when the commercial itself is (briefly) not allowed to end.

After that, Old Spice's Twitter feed began responding to random people who mentioned these commercials. Although these responses could be funny at times, this level of engagement was not particularly remarkable in 2010, a time when TurboTax and Jet Blue and Chase bank do the same. But then, at around clock-in time this Tuesday morning, a couple of teasing dispatches went out. "Today could be just like the other 364 days you log onto Twitter. Or maybe the Old Spice man shows up @OldSpice," read the first one. Then: "The Old Spice man/guy on a horse is everywhere today, and he's just getting started." That's when the videos started showing up: brief 15- to 45-second ads featuring the OSG, shirtless as ever, standing in his bathroom-only now he was addressing specific individuals.

At first, the personalized replies were directed at people like Kevin Pereira, host of channel G4's Attack of the Show, who had said kind things about the most recent Old Spice spot, and who'd had the pitchman himself, Isaiah Mustafa, on the show as a guest.

It started getting weird when a second video, made for Olympic athlete Apolo Anton Ohno, emerged; it thanked the athlete for thanking the OSG for the morning's first video.

Then videos began hitting random commenters on Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook. They went to bloggers, celebrities, people that social media marketers would classify as "social media mavens." The speed was impressive. For example, Twitter user @CaitieKendall made a comment at 12:06 p.m. on Tuesday asking the OSG to say her name, and her ad showed up online at 12:57 p.m. The planning must have been terrific: when you personalize videos to Guy Kawasaki, Digg founder Kevin Rose (twice), and the co-creator of Twitter, then you're clearly not messing around. The fact that Old Spice bothered to purchase a Promoted Tweet spot on the Trending Topics, as an insurance plan, no doubt, was completely redundant; advertising like this was publicity unto the advertising itself.

On the celebrity front, the OSG shouted out Ashton Kutcher, Ryan Seacrest and Geroge Stephanopoulos. He also hit on Christina Applegate and Alyssa Milano, and whacked a piÃ±ata with a fish for Demi Moore. He actually seemed to have a special thing for Alysa Milano, sending her the most videos of anyone during the whole ordeal (four), and even sending her actual, non-virtual flowers. Any reasonable person would be right to ask whether these celebrities were in on the campaign and played along. Maybe that did happen, but it's just as easy to picture Christina Applegate genuinely being a fan of funny TV ads, and sending out a tweet hoping for a response. When brand meets brand!

Rewarding people for spreading your message is the new name of the marketing game. It's so easy to make a commercial pitchman "famous" now that even the actually famous, who are presumably less easy to impress than mere mortals, what with all the Hollywood coke orgies-well, to have them also want to be rewarded in the same way as "regular people" is unprecedented. And the ads were absolutely about "rewards." After one Youtube commenter suggested that these ads should win an award, the OSG suggested that the commenter himself should win an award for "the Best Man on the Internet Who Likes My Old Spice Spots On the Internet". (Then he pulled out a trophy and promised to engrave it.) In a video addressed to actor David Blue on Twitter, Isaiah thanks David for spreading the word about Old Spice commercials on Twitter. It can't get more self-aware and post-anti-marketing than that. (Or can it?)

I watched all 180 of the Old Spice commercials that were made. Here are some highlights:

â€¢ One dude asked his girlfriend to marry him via the OSG, a move which will likely prove hilariously short-sighted, but is still more original than a Yankee game jumbo-tron.

â€¢ Someone on Twitter promised to name his first-born child after the OSG in exchange for a personalized video, and he got exactly that: a video addressed to his future son.

â€¢ In one of the stranger moments, the OSG held up a random crown and a jewel-encrusted scepter, while intoning just the words "random crown" and "jewel-encrusted scepter", in a video addressed to "anonymous," which has so far been viewed 400,000 times.

â€¢ Some guy who posted the grammatically questionable Youtube comment "Best thing I've ever seen since long time," got his name written in "the book of enchanting, successful people who are winning in life."

â€¢ A YouTube commenter was mocked for how many letters he used to spell "ha ha."

â€¢ In one nicely played move, in response to random Twitter user @part_number, who pointed out that these video responses are even crazier than Burger King's Subservient Chicken ads, the OSG responds that he does remember that chicken, and it was delicious. You got served, etc., BK.

â€¢ A response to a tweet from Gillette makes a point of preemptively denying that there is any cross-promotion between Old Spice and Gillette, thus beating the cynic to the punch.

The fact that this all culminated in a video addressed to the OSG actor Isaiah Mustafa himself is perfect. Gabe Delahaye at Videogum, who also received a personalized video earlier in the day, accurately summed it up as the moment when the internet exploded. Old Spice then took this meta-angle just a little too far in the direction of cheesy when OSG responded to Hayley Mustafa, Isaiah's daughter, who wrote on Twitter to ask why Isaiah looks like her dad (ugh.)

But the absolute last we heard from OSG, at least until he makes the inevitable talk show rounds through next week and we all get as sick of him as I am at this moment (you have no idea), came at 3 a.m., with an amusing sign off. In it, Isaiah is seen wearing a plethora of ribbons and medals and holding a chainsaw, talking about riding his "jet ski lion" into the sunset.

Here is some hard data on who these videos were made for:

Celebrities addressed: 16

Bloggers addressed: 28

Reddit users : 9

Youtube commenters: 26

Facebook users: 24

Twitter users: 61

Yahoo Answers: 4

Media gurus: 7

"The Internet": 3

Isaiah Mustafa, himself: 1

Hayley Mustafa: 1

In an insipid, fawning interview Wednesday night, ABC's John Berman asked Isaiah Mustafa questions as though this were all something he'd hatched in his spare time. "Explain to me this Old Spice Guy sensation, which you have created," he asks. Mustafa is an actor and former NFL wide receiver, and, like previous Old Spice pitchman, Bruce Campbell, he is an excellent emblem of hiply embraced manliness. But much of the credit for the success of... whatever all this was might conceivably go to advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy. (Regarding which: ahem.)

The way we are advertised to shows what corporations think of us, and most corporations clearly don't think too much of their audience. I saw a billboard for Nesquik the other day that showed a bottle of the product and the line: "Stop and Drink the Nesquik." It had to be pointed out to me that this was a play on the phrase "stop and smell the roses."

But the Old Spice advertising blitz this week was impeccably orchestrated. It was the first wave of something we've never seen before. Since people are opting out of advertising on TV and the Internet and across the media spectrum, it was clear that something was going to have to give. Now, for better or for worse, something has.

Joe Berkowitz is wondering if he smells the way he should.

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Scalding Grease Normal Side Effect of Undrained McDonald's Sandwiches

Dave Bry — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:35:42 +0000

"When Frank Sutton bit into his sandwich, scalding grease 'flew all over his mouth,' a fellow diner recalled. Mr. Sutton's wife took ice from her drink and applied it to his face, but his lips blistered. When he told one of the employees, he testified that she said 'this is what happens' to the sandwiches 'when they aren't drained completely.'"
-Apparently, the obesity epidemic is not working fast enough for the folks at McDonald's, who are always coming up with new and better ways to hurt people with fried chicken. Makes those Olympics commercials suggesting the world's top athletes maintain their supreme physical fitness by eating french fries and chicken McNuggets seem even more insidious.

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Liveblogging the Friskies "Adventureland" Commercial

Liz Colville — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:30:48 +0000

0:01 OK this is
0:02 reasonable enough.
0:03 This looks
0:04 familiar.
0:05 Wait those streamer things
0:06 kind of remind me of a
0:07 Pantene ad. Like illustrating
0:08 the magic of hair chemicals/cat food.
0:09 Now this is like The Lion, The Witch and
0:10 The
0:11 Wardrobe,
0:12 where a weird mirror
0:13 floating in space
0:14 equals wardrobe.
0:15 OK this is just UNFAIR.
0:16 NO CAT
0:17 experiences this kind of
0:18 ecstasy not even
0:19 on CATNIP. The
0:20 animation is atrocious. Those
0:21 turkeys are like something
0:22 from a computer game from 1997. Nanosaur!
0:23 What are the turkeys so
0:24 happy about? He is going to eat
0:25 them! This singing is like
0:26 a backing track on that sellout
0:27 Liz Phair album.
0:28 Don't fall off the
0:29 cliff!!!!!!!! Damn, cats are agile.
0:30 Is that a litter? As in the thing
0:31 that someone rich sits in while minions
0:32 carry it and walk? Oh no, it's a boat.
0:33 Cats hate water! Thank god for pirate ships!
0:34 The cat is meowing as if to say
0:35 "Where the fuck am I?!?!? I want to
0:36 go hooooooooooooooome.
0:37 REOW."
0:38 OK safely in pirate ship.
0:39 Failing to catch any fish because fish are computer-animated.
0:40 Not actually looking directly at fish
0:41 because fish have been fake CG'd into this
0:42 lucy-in-the-sky-with-fishes world.
0:43 Oh yeah,
0:44 OF COURSE SOME RARE ENDANGERED
0:45 PHEASANTS ARE GOING TO ROLL DOWN
0:46 A RED CARPET FOR YOU. OBVIOUSLY.
0:47 (THEY MIGHT JUST BE TURKEYS.)
0:48 Okay now there's an entire drum circle
0:49 of prey.
0:50 Oh but
0:51 maybe they are dancing in a farewell
0:52 like get the fuck out of here
0:53 don't eat us! We'll be nice to you if you
0:54 don't eat us!
0:55 There he/she goes. Wait did he just
0:56 come out of the washing machine?
0:57 Yes the reality is that you are just
0:58 eating 99-cent horse meat.
0:59 SORRY ABOUT THAT,
0:60 MEOWIEKINS.

Previously: The Only Three Female Musicians, According to Many Male Music Critics

Liz Colville is exciting us day and night with endless enchantment.

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New Kodak Commercial More Like 'Poltergeist' Than Presumably Intended

Dave Bry — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:30:38 +0000

What exactly is going on in that new Kodak Gallery commercial? A creepy piano tinkles as a little girl and a grandma shout to each other across the span of an absurdly large couch. Little girl says something stupid, grandma laughs at her stupidity. But the mood darkens when little girl asks grandma, "Were you ever in love?" Grandma answers with a cryptic, "Well..." The music intensifies, takes on an almost maniacal quality. Then the little girl says something about magic sea horses, grandma seems confused and, wait a minute-that couch is definitely getting smaller! Is this like an Alice In Wonderland thing? Or they're trying to convey the horror of senile dementia? Or, wait, is the grandma supposed to be a ghost? Are they both ghosts? Is this a commercial about the victims of some grisly, long-ago mass-murder coming back to haunt the living?

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