This is a billboard I would pass every morning after dropping Zack off at daycare. Since we're taking him somewhere else starting Monday, I took this yesterday morning. It's underlit, as the sun was in the wrong direction, but I don't know when, if ever, I'll go back to get a better one. You may want to click it for bigness.
This billboard cracks me up. Look how excited the ad geniuses at Hamer Motors got about sculpting the personality of their inferior rivals Mega Motors. Mega Motors is mega, so it must be a huge company that doesn't care about the little guy -- despite its size, however, their entire staff can be personified by these two characters. "Jerry," who is loud and obnoxioius, will likely be unconcerned about your car's problems because he's constantly on the phone busy with all the wheeling and dealing that is typical of his kind of power position. And then there's hapless "Doug," the mechanic who's so stupid he's going to work on your car with just a hammer and saw. Plus, he's totally intimidated by Jerry.
What really cracks me up is that they thought of these characters, figured out their props and personalities, hired some actors to play them in a photo shoot, stuck them up there with their names in weird, goofy typeface, found an appropriately scornful yet different typeface for "Mega Motors," and then, on the other side of the billboard, on which they get to present their carefully crafted depiction of their superior knowledge and service, they've got...
nothing. Just their name. They were so giggly about making their fictional rivals come to life they reduced themselves to a blank cypher. The catch phrase "experience the difference" becomes largely meaningless, as we're given nothing at all to go by except that they're not like "These Guys." Are they a crack team of well-kempt professionals in snappy uniforms with today's high-tech tools hanging off their belts, or are they a rabid warehouse full of poo-stained, screaching monkeys? Either one fits the bill. Throw us a frickin' bone, Hamer!
3 comments:
Now that's funny.
I’ve been laughing about this all weekend. This type of advertising falls under that weird category of infomercial where everything is exaggerated to ridiculous proportions, like all infomercials. Check out the Gilbert Gottfried Shoedini infomercial as an example. Excellent post!
I wrote a very lengthy reply that got erased immediately, so I decided to give up.
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