What Is Funny?

Lots of talk about the Honda Ferris Bueller ad, in which Matthew Broderick reprises his role as Ferris to sell cars.

The ad itself is fine. Some of it’s funny. Some of it is uninspired. Matthew Broderick definitely doesn’t seem to be having much fun throughout. It’s a little weird because the premise is he’s playing hooky from coming into work. What work? Hasn’t he been playing hooky for like the last 10 years?

Also, this is one of those tricks you only get to play once, so it’s kind of a shame it had to be in a commerical for a rather boring car.

Speaking of which, in all the debate over whether this ad is good or a travesty, what I don’t hear people talking about is the car. I have seen the spot several times and I still can’t remember the name of it. I think it’s like an SUV like thing? I don’t know. I don’t know any of its features or any of the things it does. Sometimes I think it was a Toyota until I remember Toyota only makes boring ads that sell cars.

But why worry about a little thing like working? If advertising were held to that standard, all of us who make a living at it would be taking many, many days off.

Macy’s ad in Miami provides the ultimate example of advertising as wish-fulfillment, following the Miami Heat’s finals loss last week.

For years, PC ads have been coddling women, only telling them they are fat and pimply and have yellow teeth, but never, ever acknowledging the real problem–their armpits are ugly.

Now, Dove has fixed that by reminding women how awful and terrible their armpits really are. Thankfully, Dove also has a cure for this. What a lucky break. That’s like two mitzvahs in one ad!

If you are a viewer of the Style Network, you could be a Shoptimist, the clever marketing term being used by the network to describe their unique viewers, evoking:

a certain kind of woman between the age of 18 and 49 who is not only a confirmed shopping enthusiast but a trusted brand evangelist.

A shopping enthusiast and a brand evangelist? Why do we need a new term to describe these people when the old one worked so well? You know, suckers.

Godaddy.com is well known for their super bowl ads, in which scantly clad women dance around, reminding us that, on some level, website domain registration is ultimately about repressed sexuality.

And sure, Godaddy has been criticized plenty for the alleged “sexism” of these ads.  But getting picked at by a few feminists for being sexist is small potatoes, so CEO Bob Parson did what any responsible corporate leader concerned about his company’s image would do:  He went out and killed an elephant, than posted pictures of it on the internet. Well done.

This makes rival controversy-seeking Virgin CEO Richard Branson’s plan to post videos of himself ordering swordfish on Youtube seem quite lame indeed.

If there’s one madvertising myth I’d love to pop it’s this: people watch the super bowl for the ads.

Actually, people (including, or maybe especially advertising people) hate the ads in the super bowl, a fact they forget every year and thus we get lots and lots of post super bowl chatter every year about how disappointing the super bowl ads were this year.

So people, please bookmark this page and so next year when you are at your super bowl watch party and you watch those first few ads with eager anticipation and then feel a tingling feeling that is eerily like utter disappointment setting in after each ad fails to elevate above being mildly interesting and remind yourself of this: the only difference between the super bowl ads you watch and the ads every other day of the year you (try to) avoid is that super bowl ads are really, really expensive.

As advertisers flee from the super-controversial MTV show Skins, which is the first ever TV show to depict sexual situations on TV with young people, one brand stands out from the rest. H&R Block, who is pulling its ads after the shows too-hot-for-tax-advice debut.

This of course raises troubling questions such as, why the hell is H&R Block running ads on MTV? Note to H&R Block media planners: if you see your ad next to pimple cream, you are in the wrong place.