Car Commercials, the good, the bad, and the annoying!

i_luv_toyota

Those ads with the post-it notes are lame, and I hate the way they underscore the phrase "all-new" in the print portion at the end of the ad.

pjyoung

These words were used in a local Toyota ad for .... CAMRY'S. Reliable? Yes. Well Built? Yes. Sleek and Sporty? C'mon.....

i_luv_toyota

IMHO are far worse than the national ads. I mean they all suck, but one sucks less!

Also dealers seem to exaggerate quite a bit. Even I as a Camry owner (and enthusiast) do not think it's sporty either.

i_luv_toyota

This is the new theme for Toyota's 2003 clearance sale (as per the Toyota web page in the US), and fortunately haven't seen an ad for it yet.

Now that I said (or rather typed) that, I probably see it a million times. God I hope not...

vikd

...pretty good, came out a year or two ago...

Ad starts out with a shot of a red, then new Celica GT-S parked on a neighborhood street. Shortly after opening shot, a small dog comes barreling out from the side of the adjacent house and runs head first in to the back of the Celica.

Tag line..."Looks fast standing still..."

I havent seen (or heard) a local Toy ad though that hasnt made me wretch... I especially like the radio ad where it is just a single spokesperson (always a man actually) who is explaining one kind of "event" or another, all the while there is constant chatter and activity in the background as if the spokeman is broadcasting live from the busiest showroom known to man... puhhleeease...

Regards... Vikd

a_l_hubcaps

vikd-

That ad was for the Celica Action Package. There was another one where an old man comes out of his house and yells, "Slow down, punk! This is a neighborhood!" at the parked car. Those two were pretty good as far as Toyota ads go.

-Andrew L

vikd

...that's it! The "old man" one made me laugh as well... ;-) Then there was that other Toy ad that made me laugh too...hhmm, which was it? Oh, that's right, there WERE no other good ones!

Regards... Vikd

i_luv_toyota

I have never caught any Celica Action package commercials. I've heard of them before, just never caught one. They sounded hilarious!

Does anybody know where they can be downloaded?

i_luv_toyota

We have one of those around here (Toyota of Stamford--Stamford, CT), where a "reporter" is interviewing the "owner" of the dealership about his "specials" (like the ubiquitous "push, pull, or tow" deals) on cars, and in the background you can hear background chattering of a crowd.

Yeah, right. Everytime I pass ANY Toyota dealer, it's practically devoid of customers, and salesman are chatting to each other to pass the time. Even when I bought my RAV4, I was the only one in the showroom aside from my salesman and the receptionists.

I also hate ads that make it look like going to the dealer is like going to an amusement park. Dealerships are not fun or exciting, I personally dread going to one.

fintail

Lately Chrysler/Jeep ads have had the same problem, packed showrooms and lots. The lot here isn't quite so bustling.

a_l_hubcaps

I would like visiting dealerships except that the salesmen often descend upon you like vultures and won't leave you alone. I have taken to visiting lots on Sundays to check out the new models in peace.

-Andrew L

just4fun2

our dealers are even open on Sundays in NE Ohio.

i_luv_toyota

Just go at night! They leave their lights on so I can go there at 9-10pm with no problems (this is in SW CT, essentialy the metro NYC area, so I don't think Ohio would be any different)!

This makes for wonderful, stress-free car lot browsing!

vikd

...prepping customers for this weekend: Same spokesman talking about the huge "construction sale" happening right now. All the while, you hear various saws and hammering sounds in the background as if he's right in the middle of things...whatever...

There's another one getting some radio play past couple of days: Apparently, the local VW dealer is having a "sale so big", that they need to "pitch a tent in the parking lot"...

Regards... Vikd

kenjabi

A new one for the Nissan Sentra. A kid is hiding amongst some trash cans in an alley. Four guys in a Sentra come up from behind. They stop, get out of the car at the same time, and peg the dude with water balloons. All this is shown in slow motion, and with a famous male opera song playing in the background. I think it was supposed to be like a scene from The Godfather. I thought it was pretty good, although it didn't really say anything about the car itself.

I also saw one for a Ford truck (I think it was Ford), touting how you can finance a new truck for only $179/month at 0%. But look at the small print. It's for a SIX year loan! I hope you plan on keeping it for the full six years, otherwise good luck getting your money back when you sell it!

intrepidspirit

I believe i_luv_toyota previously mentioned the Nissan Frontier ad with the loud, brow-beating drill sargeant as a bad commercial. IMHO, this is the WORST car/vehicle commercial I have ever seen or heard! I am annoyed everytime I hear it.

Is this commercial supposed to entice the consumer to buy a Nissan Frontier? The mind boggles...

swschrad

that goes into the "screamer" category for me. I do not patronize screamers present or past. period.

crkeehn

That song is the aria from Pagliacci. Pagliacci was a clown and I believe a tragic one, as was the kid hiding behind the trash can.

18fan

Saw one over the weekend that really made me laugh.

Starts out with a Nissan Sentra parked on the side of a rural road, with audio of the car idling. Young guy in the drivers seat, girl in the passenger seat flipping pages in a magazine, another girl with big funky hair in rear seat behind driver & other rear seat is empty. The driver checks his rear view mirror & begins to slowly pull away.... just then, another young guy jumps out from behind a tree, tucking himself in (had been peeing behind the tree), and starts running after the car as the theme music from "Chariots of Fire" starts playing..... flash back to the 3 inside the car who are laughing hysterically! Then you hear the announcer say "Some things are just too good to pass up."

Not sure it would convince me to buy a Sentra, but the commercial is very entertaining. :-)

intrepidspirit

has a nice commercial out. Guy dressed in 50's overcoat and fedora gets on the subway. Outside his window he sees a a poster of a huge 50's Caddy. As the subway pulls out, you see the same poster over and over again and the Caddy appears to be driving. A CTS pulls up alongside, followed by other Caddies. The subway car stops and it's 2003. the guy gets off the subway and looks at a poster of a CTS. The voice-over says "you could have seen it coming" or something like that.

A lot of imagination went into this commercial and it is pleasant to watch...

andre1969

or a couple at least, that anybody who lives in the Baltimore, MD area should recognize. Antwerpen Hyundai is having some kind of sales blitz going on where they're trying to sell 1,000 Hyundais in a month. They're pretty annoying, but my friends and I have found a way to have fun with them.

Here's a rough script, of how they go...there's two guys, one who's a sales manager or some other peon, and then an old dude who I guess is Jack Antwerpen, who I guess owns the place.

Anyway, it goes something like this...
Peon: "Who has the best value?"
Jack: "HYUN-DAI!!"
Peon: "Who has the longest warranty?"
Jack: "HYUN-DAI!!"
Peon: "who has the best selection of Hyundais?"
Jack: "WE DOO!!"
Peon: "How many Hyundais are we gonna sell this month?"
Jack: "ONE THOUSAND HYUNDAIS!!"
Peon: "And how are we gonna do that?"
Jack: "SAY YES TO EVERY DEAL!!!"

It's grindingly stupid, but if you say Jack's lines along with him, using your best "harelip" voice (which Jack kinda talks in, himself) it's actually pretty funny.

Politically incorrect, but funny ;-)

swschrad

all auto commercials with screamers are, by definition, sucky at best and ( ) at worst. IMHO dealerships run by people who flunked their ethics classes hire screamers. all such places should be identified to the Second Secretary of the North Korean Embassy as ideal places for bomb targets.

andre1969

they were screaming more than Caroll Burnett and company doing a skit of "The Family". Sad thing is though, these ads must work.

My roommate's Mom and sister recently bought Hyundais from there. I hope it wasn't the screamer ads that reeled them in! I don't know how the sales transaction went, but they both seem happy with their cars. His Mom got an '02 Sonata and his sister, a '99 Elantra.

scscars

As if screaming pitchmen and dealers weren't enough, in Chicago, the local Ford dealer group uses "Any Way You Want It" by Journey to hype their end of year clearance. What is particularly annoying is that the lyrics are recorded at a volume so high that it would rival a front-row seat at a concert. Then, the music is toned down over the loud voice-over for the clearance deals. The ad comes off as one 60-second barrage of noise that a low-flying jet would have difficulty drowning out.

swschrad

they volumaxed the sound so the VU display never drops one peg, and then recorded it hot on the tapes they sent out to the stations. that sucks, bill ford. I hope it blows you off your own couch on weekends. do something about it.

this pinhead sort of nonsense is going to make my next TV, assuming they ever get their act together on HDTV and get rid of stupid decoder trick proposals to make useless everything that's already been sold, one like a Philips Magnavox with the blast-limiter circuit built in.

get a clue, advertisers... this idiocy is why lots of folks are looking for TiVo type features in their teevees, so they can auto-skip all commercials. yes, that's right, you are dying on the vine. clean up your act or perish... We, The People are speaking!

i_luv_toyota

I can't enjoy a single ballgame without being blasted off my seat because of them. Ford should stop now.

There's a new set of Lexus ads out which annoy me half to death. There's a few, but I'll describe one (you've seen one you've seen 'em all!). An office worker is approached by whom I presume to be his boss. The boss asks the guy to watch his place over the weekend and to "keep an eye on Mr. Jingles (or something)." "Mr. Jingles" turns out to be a boat, and the place the office worker is watching is some waterside mansion in what looks like Miami. A servant comes up when the guy is coming back with the boat and says "Your massuse (sp?) is ready for you sir!"
This leads me to believe that all Toyota marketing execs are complete and utter morons.

God that irritates me to all ends.

i_luv_toyota

I assume these are national. These all pop up in the same breaks that the horrid Ford ads pop up in.

Anyway, I'll describe one. "The 2003 Hyundai Sonata has got more features than a Honda Accord LX (some use Toyota Camry LE) at a cost several thousand less. You also get "America's Best Warranty" and with that you get a winning streak that's hard to beat."

They have another for the Elantra and Santa Fe, which are basically the same except for competing models names. While they are not terribly bad, it's just their frequency of appearance that makes them annoying.

i_luv_toyota

And finally, there's a clearance ad for Jeep that uses what I presume to be yet another Smashmouth song. It shows a bunch of beachgoers driving around their Jeeps on the sand, playing vollyball, etc. And the song ends something like "You're my number....oooooooonnne (1)"

Anyway, if the song is indeed Smashmouth, it'll make them one of the most commercialized bands ever to come along.

swschrad

somebody just needs to put a talking head close-up on the screen with a Belchfire feed cap. nice and calm, deep resonant voice of authority. "Belchfire Motors has to get rid of the 2003 cars now. We need the room. The financing is free on them now. No interest, period. If your credit is good, you even get ten percent chopped off the price. We'll send you a gas grill. I'm not screaming because you waited all year for this. You told everybody you want a new Belchfire V-13. Do it now, while you can."

good risks are not hopheaded fools. this ought to work. please, God, somebody, try it!

lemko

...for 0% for 60 months was slick as it said "people with very good credit are eligible." I guess if you have less than a 750 FICO score forget it.

swschrad

and I suspect it's 750 or higher that they are all looking for.

now, if you went in with ID as Isaac Fair, maybe they'd take your word for it..

i_luv_toyota

All the clearance sales are over (at least Toyota and Honda), taking the annoying ads with them!

Also, has anybody noticed the gratuitous amount of turn signal usage in car commercials?

swschrad

there is a reason there are put there by federal safety requirements. flash 'em when changing lanes, use 'em when turning, turn 'em off manually when you have made one of those 25-degree turns and the cam doesn't flip the blinker off for you.

now, everybody concentrate with me on my ESP tests.... think very hard, to the point of pain,

"osama-yo-momma, all the evil comes from drivers who don't use turn signals. osama-yo-momma, all the evil comes from drivers who don't use turn signals....."

andre1969

I wonder if harelip dude (see my previous post, around #1818 or so) ended up selling his 1,000 Hyundais for August? I haven't had a chance to watch too much tv yet in September, so I haven't seen any more of his commercials.

i_luv_toyota

"osama-yo-momma, all the evil comes from drivers who don't use turn signals. osama-yo-momma, all the evil comes from drivers who don't use turn signals....."

Amen to that.

i_luv_toyota

Just saw a commercial saying Toyota extended their clearance sale! Just when I thought we were through with this, it starts up all over again.

(Toyota, nobody wants '03s anymore, so enough sale extentions please)

Even worse, the Ford ads with the "Any way you want it" song are still on.

Will the madness never end?

scscars

For Ford, the "Journey" never seems to end. Please, enough already with "Any Way You Want It." If Ford can't sell '03 Tauruses and Focuses (Focii?)then they should dump the ads and send all the leftovers to Hertz and Budget.

swschrad

they just want to clear as much as they can, thus the extraspecial wonderous Family Events, balloons for the adults (uh, wait, somebody will get the wrong idea... balloons for the kids, yeah, that's it :-D ) and baby chicks for the kids, and register for the chance to win a 1951 Studebaker Project Car!!!

gambit293

Anyone else find the Hummer, soapbox derby commercial annoying?

I noticed that at the end of the race, the other drivers have all caught up; they just can't pass the Hummer because it's so big.

swschrad

a wink and a grin, and down the hill we go. news services today are carrying a story about a 2-year-old kid who got out of a locked motel room while mom was showering, managed to start her car which was in first gear, and it went through the wall of the motel. while the cops were there, the slippery little kid got out and to the car again.

now, THAT is annoying.

not at all as cute as, say, when I slipped the e-brake on Dad's chevy when I was two and rolled across the street into a curb. no damage, just fun. that's what the little nipper should have done.

of course, maybe he will grow up to earn Nextel cup points... but only if he doesn't learn how to turn right

a_l_hubcaps

The other day I was walking past a construction site on my college campus, and I saw a few of the builders loading stuff into the back of a Chevy Silverado. As I approached I noticed that it would be a perfect shot for a magazine ad -- the truck was parked at a slight upward angle on the dirt, the sun was reflecting off the grille, etc. I was expecting to hear someone start singing, "Like a rock..." :-)

-Andrew L

swschrad

they have to tower over the landscape, and step widely over majestic Foobar Hall to reach their tools' battery charger if they are going to be in the commercials.....

andys120

the soapbox derby ad features one kid who's plywood racer looks just like an H2. The kid with the wooden H2 wins the race by going x-country, cute.

Come to think of it H2s are so squared off they could be made of plywood.

ajvdh

This is an ad for the Ford Ka (a Lilliputian device we don't get in the states). Apparently, both the RSPCA and the Royal Pigeon Racing Society (tm. Dave Barry, "I am not making this up") are Less Than Amused.

http://tinyurl.com/ng3y

swschrad

funny ad. they can diaper the pigeons if they're worried. nobody raised hob about the Ram butting the "calvin" sticker off the back of the pickup window because the "calvin" could have been hurt.

kenjabi

Maybe someone can jog my memory about which brand of SUV this ad was for:

Starts out with two guys camping and really "roughing it", showing one guy eat a bug, and so forth. They drive along a river in their SUV (dirty and well worn) when another SUV, supposedly the same brand but much nicer looking, silver and clean, with 3 kids in the back, watching a movie on an RES and reading. One kid looks out and waves at the surprised guys in the dirty SUV, then they separate and drive away.

I'm pretty sure the two SUVs were the same brand, maybe even same model, but one the more rugged style and the other more luxurious. Anyone seen this one?

vcheng

...the Nissan Pathfinder (the two guys roughing it) and the Nissan Pathfinder Armada (the big comfy one with the family).

PF_Flyer

There's so much advertising for EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE... that I pretty much tune it all out and glaze over. I've seen that ad, but couldn't tell you what make it was for... and this from someone who's been driving Datsun/Nissan vehicles since 1979!
I think it's getting harder and harder to create effective advertising.


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speterson1

Did you do that on purpose? Put the advertisement for Town Hall chat *immediately* after your statement about creating effective advertising? LOL!

loncray

Okay, that's the funniest thing I've seen in a very long time. If I were in the market for a tiny British-market Ford, I'd definitely give the SportsKa a look. I wonder why Ford doesn't sell those things in Boston? Then you could pahk the Ka in the garahge.