An Ad That Resonates With This Viewer (or My Ad's On Vibrate For You)

There’s this company called Marathon Oil Corporation and they’ve been running an ad like crazy. It’s standard stuff following in the foot steps of British Petroleum. Female employee says “I’m proud of what we are doing here in Garyville, LA... cleanest, safest, newest...” You know the drill. I understand softening the image of an oil corporation and have no comment on the tactic.

But I brought up the ad for some damn reason right? Right. About seven seconds into the ad there is a note that seems a little out of place in the pretty little background melody. It’s sort of a low tone. What is so cool about this tone is how well it mimics the sound of a cell phone vibrating in a jacket pocket somewhere. Every time the commercial plays I look up and wonder where my phone is and why the ringer isn’t on. Then I realize “its that damn Marathon commercial again.” Nice Job Marathon/whomever made your ad. It is a total attention grabber. I wish I could play the ad for you folks here, but alas I cannot find it and it might not come across as well on your computers audio.

I guess I am mainly curious if anyone else has noticed the phenomenon. If ya have leave a comment. Thanks.

UPDATE: Turns out Marathon has always been a forerunner in television advertising... "1963 Marathon Ad"

Is Amex Protected From Unexpected Problems. or Bashing The Tina Fey Amex Ad. or Get A Job Dave You're Scaring Us.

Tina Fey AmEx commercial
Uploaded by nycspitters

Did you ever see an ad on television and it just doesn't get its message across. Maybe I just watch too much TV... No, I definitely watch too much TV, but these problems in ads always catch my attention. Sometimes an important line is hard to understand or the message is lost in bad editing, but most times I see the ad again a few days later and its been repaired and I think “nice, they noticed it too.”

Well, Amex’s new Tina Fey ad is chock full of these errors and yet it keeps running as is. I am amazed at how faulty this ad is and just had to run through the list of what needs to be fixed.

1. “Change the bear to a shark.” This line is mumbled quickly and I doubt most are catching what it is on the first listen.
2. “These are my divorce papers.” Beside the line being swallowed. The joke is that the papers were not handed to Tina, but she has grabbed them out of habit and comments on how funny they are, but the poor cut in which she takes the papers does not illustrate well that they were not intended for her review. We might piece together the joke better if the closing line “they’re hilarious” was more comprehendible.
3. “Miss Fey, the snake wrangler got bit again.” Another line delivered quickly and clumsily.
4. “Which flute too den a moopie sketch.” After ten attempts I am still unsure what this guy is saying. Obviously “which flute” is all that matters, but I cant help wonder what comes between those words and “sketch.”
5. Finally, Amex calls to ask Tina if she used the card to purchase 14,000 racquet balls. Ok, nice of them to call, but are we supposed to be impressed at their ability to catch such an outlandish charge? More racquet balls than Tina could use in her lifetime? (at 5 balls a weekend for the next 50 years)

Yes, this is all nitpicking, but I love Amex. (I will love them even more when they get me back 200 bucks back for my iPhone purchase) I expect more from them. I also love Tina Fey. She deserves better. Amex's Ellen Degeneres ad was flawless and even won an Emmy. Pull it together guys. This kind of shoddy work makes me think you may be slipping.

Gimme Some Credit

You know you did a good job parodying a genre when a song you wrote for an imaginary band which would eventually become an imaginary super band gets picked up for an actual American Express commercial. Gimme Some Money is a song by The Thamesmen, a band that never existed and went on to never actually be Spinal Tap. Sweet.

Thamesmen performing Gimme Some Money on GoogleVideo