The Taco Bell Diet?

While it seems a bit like an oxymoron to me, it is, in fact Taco Bell's new ad campaign. I remember seeing one of the ads a few weeks ago and thinking the fast food company was almost making fun of itself and by parading a woman, Christine Dougherty, around as this Subway's Jared-like success case in losing weight on the Taco Bell diet. There's nothing wrong with this, it's awesome that Christine lost the weight, and I can understand why Taco Bell would want to showcase her the way Subway showcased Jared, but it doesn't quite fit.

Initially your intuition and the years of learning that fast food is pretty much bad for you. Yes, Taco Bell has healthier menu options, like all the fast food chains do now, but still, how much healthier are they really? In this article from one of my favorite recipe websites, where the recipes from Cooking Light are housed, they discuss the healthfulness of the items on Taco Bell's Fresco menu and sum up that a consistent diet from them will probably leave you lacking calcium and fiber. Plus all of these items are high in sodium like much processed food, and while that's not necessarily going to keep you from slimming down, it may push your blood pressure up.

My bigger issue with spot is it's tone though. Whether Taco Bell's Fresco menu or not doesn't make a shred of difference in when the creative's bad. The commercial doesn't even seem to take itself seriously. It has a cheesy, goofy, infomercial style which I'm sure was intentional, they even have an infomercial for it. It makes it a little hard to tell if Taco Bell is really pushing this as a diet. Of course they have disclaimers like crazy about how Christine's story is not typical, but the treatment in the ad seems to walk that fine line where most people laugh it off as stupid, while a few gullible others think this might actually work. The issue I see here is Taco Bell has managed to partially lump it's brand in with the questionable diet pill companies of the world. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I see this ad targeting the same kind of customers, especially when they're even marketing it as a Drive-thru diet—no exercise necessary. Sound familiar?

What do you think?

Is Liberty Mutual Doing The Right Thing?

Liberty Mutual has a new campaign running about doing the 'right thing.' The campaign follows a family faced with a number of difficult decisions. Should Grandpa go in a nursing home or move in with the family? Should the parents spy on their teenage daughter's online activity? How do you handle lay off in the family? Typical difficult decisions faced by a regular family. The first spot sets up the following two by outline the tough decisions the family has to make.

The trouble is, the following spots don't make much sense if you haven't seen the first one. I saw the parents spying on their daughter spot (below) first and was completely confused. As a stand alone it makes little sense, especially on how it relates to insurance. The text at the end is the only connection.

If you visit the corresponding site, ResponsibilityProject.com, you can see all five videos that follow the family through a variety of situations. They're almost like little mini homemade films shot by the hand held video camera of the youngest sibling and at the end you are asked to join the discussion. It doesn't seem like they have too many people discussing, although it's interesting to note they also have a section with articles of other controversial topics, from Rent as a high school musical to cloning puppies, and those articles are actually sparking some decent discussion on the site. More than the spots themselves it seems.

It's entirely possible that I saw the set up commercial before the daughter one, but glossed over it since it's pretty forgettable, and I remembered the daughter one only because it confused me. Overall, the campaign has a nice idea but it just seems to be trying to hard. I enjoyed Liberty Mutual's last campaign, which gave the same idea, but simplified it and managed to show you good deeds and responsible actions rather than tell you about them. Plus the execution of it was fantastic and I soon became a fan of the band from that soundtrack.

What do you think? Are these Liberty Mutual ads effective? Have you even noticed them?

Honda Gets Groovy

So this apparently went down back in October, but I just saw this commercial last night. Honda took a section of road in Lancaster, California and paved it with grooves so that when you drive over it, the William Tell Overture plays. The overall effect is quite cool. It reminds me a bit of the fantastic Machine and Acapella spots W+K London did for Honda a couple years ago. Though the project got some bad press with neighbors sick of hearing the noise from passing cars, most people driving over the piece of road thoroughly enjoy it. I almost think of it as environmental art in a way. Check out the commercial to see how they did it and hear the final product.

Would Anyone Actually Cross Over To Animal Crossing?

A couple weeks ago, I saw this commercial and my jaw literally dropped. Seriously? Is this really a product on the market for Wii? Animal Crossing seems like a child-like video game version of Second Life. While that's not really my cup of tea, I guess I could see some people liking it—like kids. The weird thing is, this game does not seem remotely aimed at kids. The commercial features two 20-something women in nice houses discussing their activities of the day and then deciding to 'go watch the fireworks' together. Oops, but the catch is, they are doing all of these activities on the video game while talking to each other. They're actually sitting on their couches watching cartoon fireworks. Seriously? The whole thing seems bizarrely out of sync and their target market off base. Are they really getting a 20-something market for this product? Are they getting anyone for this product?

Maybe I just don't get it. Has anyone out there actually played this game? Maybe you can shed some light on the mystery.

Another Hidden Camera Ad

I know we've been following the hidden camera trend in television ads lately, but I've been putting off posting about the Hardee's/Carl's Jr. fake restaurant spots because I'M SO SICK OF HIDDEN CAMERAS. It's gotten quite annoying, actually. Almost like they're wasting air time.

What gives? Is the creative team really that strapped for ideas that this is all they can come up with? Or are their executives feeling pressure to jump on the "hidden camera bandwagon" because everyone else is doing it?

At least Hardee's/Carl's Jr. has figured out where to reach people: They've created a Fake Restaurant account on youtube and have uploaded 16 videos, mostly director's cuts of their spots (which is equally annoying--who wants to watch a three-minute Hardee's ad?).

If you really can't get enough of the been there, done that hidden camera ad, here's one from Carl's Jr:

No Wonder People Hate Advertising

There are some pretty bad commercials out there, but this has to be one of the most distasteful I've seen in a long time. It really just makes me ill. As stated in the AdFreak post I discovered this in, it's no wonder people hate advertising.

Quizno's Attempts $5 Sub Too

Earlier, Megan posted about Subway's new $5 footlong deal and the commercial/jingle that goes with it. Well apparently it's made enough of a splash for Quizno's to directly retaliate. Personally, I hate commercials that directly attack a competitor, it's just annoying and uncreative. This particular spot attempts and fails at some humor in the beginning and then just goes on to say, 'Look we have $5 subs too, but with more meat. Take that Subway!' Yeah... not so creative. Granted, in general I like Quizno's better than Subway, and I'm not a fan of the $5 footlong jingle, but this Quizno's spot made them look like they're chasing after Subway. It's just plain sad.

Love the Song, Hate the Commercial

I'm sorry, but Taco Bell's latest campaign is just awful. I'm generally not a fan of 99% of Taco Bell ads, but this last one really gets me since not only is it annoying, but it's managed to ruin a fabulous song for me too. Ugh.

So please, if you're going to make bad commercials, at least stay consistent and use bad music too. It'll be awhile before I can listen to this Modern English song again without gagging.

A(n Unwelcome) Blast from the Past

Remember that commercial for HeadOn, the topical headache product you "apply directly to your forehead"? Of course you do. It was a TV sensation of sorts, an annoying, low budget, inescapable spot interrupting Wheel of Fortune with a penetrating message that created the sort of throbbing pain the product itself was intended to relieve. No wonder we were all running to the store shelves for our own bottle.

Immediately spoof-able, it was only a matter of time before a commercial parody ended up as a paid advertisement on cable TV. Here's the ad I saw last weekend.

My Favorite Terrible Commercials

Scores of bad commercials squeeze their way into our television shows every day and while most of them are ignored as much as possible, there are a few you simply can't avoid. A classic example is the Charmin Whipple campaign, but there's a store in St. Louis that takes the modern day cake for terrible, but memorable commercials. Anyone who's spent any time in the city is sure to recognize them and their infamous tag.