"It's just a fucking mediocre sitcom. I want people to laugh, and this isn't funny. And it ain't funny to me because I'm 67 years old and I've been doing this a long time and I've been making a lot of people laugh a lot better than this."
- Chevy Chase on 'Community' in one of those Dan Harmon voicemails.
Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno are giving Matthew Broderick's Ferris Bueller ad a run for its money with their own Super Bowl ad for the Acura NSX. Well, they say it's for the NSX, but it's really just as effective as an ad for dancing holographic monkeys. Or the professional services of Jerry Seinfeld as a butler and personal entertainer. Either of which I think most of us would pay A PRETTY PENNY for, am I wrong?
Weird: Will Ferrell is doing ads for Old Milwaukee beer now. Weirder: he approached them, not the other way around. Weirdest: he requested that the ads take place in Davenport, Iowa (even though Pabst Brewing Company is based in Wisconsin, and the beer he's talking about has "Milwaukee" right in the name). What witchery is at the bottom of this?? Has an Iowan gunslinger with a lot of state pride got some kind of dirt on Will Ferrell and is blackmailing him into submission? Two more ad spots below so you can continue your investigation, gumshoe.
More and more, advertisers are looking to comedians to sell their products, says the New York Times. (I knew Melissa McCarthy becoming the face of Ivory soap was important for some reason!) Apparently, it's economy-related: people like to laugh during tough times. Go figure. Fred Allen and Jack Benny did radio commercials during the Depression; Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres do TV commercials now.
Beyond the economic factor, comedians give off an image of lightheartedness and humanity, which is valuable for heavy-hearted, faceless, evil corporations. In the words of Charles Torrey, vice president for marketing for the Minute Maid trademark (oh, right, him), “humor is a way [...]
Here's the second of six (!!) planned ads for New Era that feature a Yankees-loving Alec Baldwin and a Sox-loving John Krasinski locking horns over their choice of local baseball squads. These are so very good. Why can't all commercials be short comedy sketches featuring very funny people? Specifically, Alec Baldwin? How many baseball hats do we need to buy to make that happen?
Before we go any further, it's important that you know this is not a Parks & Rec webisode, but an American Express commercial starring Aziz Ansari as himself. And a pretty funny one at that. I don't know what this "Jessica's" problem is, by the way. Dude bought a kayak for this date and she isn't impressed? That's gotta be at least number three on the oh-no-no list.
This re-enactment of Ferris Bueller's Day Off starring Matthew Broderick for Honda's Super Bowl spot is an excellent example of advertising. Not that I condone advertising. Or any -ising for that matter. -isings in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ising, he should believe in himself. I quote Ferris Bueller, "I quote John Lennon, 'I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.'" Good point there. After all, he was Matthew Broderick. I could be Matthew Broderick. I'd still have to do commercials for Honda.
It's itty bitty Jason Bateman! And his hair! Just think, he was 18 when this PSA was made, but he was already fighting for the curmudgeonly cause against those gosh-darned kids with their new-fangled jim-jam noise they call rock music. Also, he looks and sounds like he is 30-40% asleep, which I guess was all the rage for teen heartthrobs in '87.
Totally Obvious News of the day: ratings for shows are really, really different when you factor in DVR. Networks are finally starting to count the number of people who watch a show on DVR in the seven days after it airs, in addition to the previously-measured number of people watching live or on DVR that night. And it makes a real difference: according to same-night viewers, Two Broke Girls was the biggest new sitcom this fall; counting seven-day-DVR, New Girl does better.
Interesting, sure. But will the new measurement actually stop good shows from getting canceled? Probably not. The key number is still the C3 rating, or how [...]
Comedians in commercials are definitely a thing. I’m no good at trivia, but I can always impress my (non-comedy nerd) friends and family members by knowing the names of actors in commercials because so many of them are stand up and improv comics. From a 2009 episode of The Comedy Nerds Podcast called Comedians in Commercials comes this: “It’s a great way to make money and also to get seen. For many comedians, they’re good actors, and have good comedic timing and good comedic abilities and it’s hard to get someone to actually pay for that in the stand up comedy world. The path of least resistance is [...]
These two Super Bowl ads really show that great commercials can come in all shapes and sizes. There's NBC's "please just watch some of our programs, we're literally begging you" spot, and then there's a Will Ferrell ad only seen in North Platte, Nebraska. On the one hand, you have an entire network of stars doing choreographed singing and dancing to a song from a Broadway show, from Community to SNL. And on the other, just a guy walking up in a field, and taking a cold drink from an Old Mi-
After Alec Baldwin's Words With Friends misbehavior, the supermarket chain Wegmans pulled their Baldwin-starring ads from last year instead of running them again this holiday season. Is that what rock bottom feels like?
Update: Wegmans is back on board!
There's so much to love about this early Stephen Colbert commercial. That down-home banjo music. The font! Oh God, the font. And most of all, Colbert's round little baby face. (I also love how they point labeled arrows at the credit card and the phone showing us what to pay attention to. Ads today should bring that back. We need guidance.)
912 is a joke! In the fourth of six planned John Kransinski Alec Baldwin New Era ads, Baldwin's burning hatred for the Red Sox results in him accidentally setting his heavy mahogany furniture and supple leather sofas aflame out of spite. In the end, Alec and John have to move in together a la The Odd Couple, forced to get along despite their competing personality quirks and the increasingly obvious fact that, in this world, Alec Baldwin has completely lost his mind.
