I wonder if when he walked away from Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld understood that that show would be his only legacy. Probably not. The Super Bowl Ad for the new Acura NSX was entertaining, but it relied pretty heavily on old Seinfeld gags. What’s crazy about that, is that there is a whole generation of kids that don’t get those jokes. And those kids are only vaguely aware of the existence of Jay Leno.

Also, given the kinds of cars that Leno and Seinfeld collect, I don’t see a place for the free NSX that I hope Honda gave them for doing this ad.

Anyway, not terrible.

UPDATE: I just watched the ad again. What’s the deal with Jerry’s outfit in the beginning of the ad? Polo shirt with an undershirt, under a jacket?

Rating Thirty Seconds of Okay

Clint Eastwood. This exploiting Detroit shit is really getting old. I sure as shit don’t want to hear it from fucking Chrysler.

Not even Wieden Kennedy can make a compelling ad for Chrysler’s aging fleet of shit products.

Rating Thirty Seconds of Hell

Alright! Sarah Palin Breast Implants, Our digital marketing team just alerted me that our best Tiger Woods Sex Tape traffic comes when we post about Medical Marijuana Gheorge Muresan. Is it possible that posts about very large people are page-view gold? Let’e find out, shall we?

Anyway, this ad is famous because the very large man in it is now dead.

The Heart Attack Grill serves food with a lot of fat in it. They are very clear about the fact that eating it is not good for you. They present that fact as a joke and a selling point. (The other selling points are waitresses dressed as sexy nurses) In a country as dangerously fat as this one, this place might seem in poor taste. But, that is the point and to some, it’s funny. I would probably try eating there.

The production is about right for a regional burger chain and the writing is considerably better than anything foisted upon the public by David & Goliath. Overall, it’s a pretty unremarkable ad.

I am glad that this very unhealthy person became a minor celebrity out of all of this. He really seems to be enjoying himself. Old CT was about 600 lbs when he first came to the US. It can be very sad and lonely. In those first few years, as I battled an addiction to Hot Pockets, I would have killed to be next to a little lady like the one in this ad.

We don’t even try to sell ads on the site.

Rating: Thirty Seconds of a guy who I hope is in Heaven

A few weeks ago, I expressed my hatred for Kia’s new ads in a short and ineloquent post. After seeing the above ad, the ad Kia used to showcase an important new car during the Super Bowl, I feel as though that post may have been an inadequate expression of Kia-hate. But, Kia didn’t make these ads, all they have been making are increasingly decent cheap cars. Kia may have approved these ads, but the real blame for their existence should be fixed squarely on the head of ad agency David & Goliath.

If you click through to David & Goliath’s website, the very first thing the company will subject you to is a video that is more than seven minutes long. The video touts the “culture” at David & Goliath, and pukes the most hackneyed marketing platitudes before finally getting to a few TV campaigns that for some reason, they are proud of. They also mention that they are headquartered in California, and “Californians through and through” as if that is some romantic notion, like California has some special magic that didn’t crumble at some time in the early 1990s. There are some great, great people in California, but the last couple of decades have not helped make California a selling point for your unbearably dull agency.

The highlight of the David & Goliath video begins just before the one minute mark. You’ll need to see it to believe it, but they actually highlight “Hispanic” as one of the goliath marketing assignments they can help you with.

These are people so enamored of their own “creativity” that they don’t feel stupid saying, “Hey, what if we do an ad where we use hamsters instead of people, and then we can make the cool hamsters dress like black people, and the regular hamsters will be naked, but like, they are not as cool, but you know, because it won’t seem racist, because we use hamsters instead of people” And then, because it’s not in their culture to tell one of their employees to fuck off and think of something that won’t make people want to hang themselves, the hamster idea kind of sticks around, and gets developed to the point where it makes sense to show it to the people at Kia, because, they’ve put some work into it and most of the people in the office like it.

And they show the ad to these people that represent the marketing arm of the American arm of Kia Motors. And they giggle, and approve it. And it becomes a hit with a lot of people putting it in the kind of spam e-mail you get from relatives who just figured out that e-mail exists.

And there is press on how popular and effective this ad is, which tells the people at David & Goliath that they should be confident in their ideas and even if something seems immeasurably stupid, they should give it a chance, because it might be the next big hit. And they talk about how “brave” they are for giving their inane, simple ideas room to breath and grow.

And maybe it will be a big hit, but the fact that McDonalds sells millions of pounds of awful food every year doesn’t make that food good. It is merely easy to eat, easy to get and anything but challenging.

Anyway, this new ad, “Epic Drive” is another piece of garbage in the David & Goliath portfolio.

Rating: Thirty Seconds of Hell

Really, fuck you. Once again, I am faced with an ad that I truly hate. It actually makes me angry. (What the hell does that say about me as a person? Pretty much the most petty human on the planet, Amiright?)

My hatred is made worse by the fact that other people actually like it. It’s pretty popular and it’s been effective. So, the “takeaway” here is that this reviewer is totally out of touch and you really ought not listen to him when he rates this one emphatically as:

30 Seconds of Hell

Here is a tip for Christine O’Donnell: If you’re trying to make the point that you’re not a witch, don’t go with the spooky black with steam rising from a boiling cauldron backdrop for your “I’m not a witch” ad.

Another tip for Christine O’Donnell, don’t run for the Senate if you can’t name a single person serving as a member of the majority party in the Senate. And, if you’re running on a Strict Constitutionalist platform, learn the amendments, at least the bill of rights.

Welcome to the Senate, Senator Coons!!

Thirty Seconds of Hell

This one seems to have really taken a page out of Sega CD’s playbook. See “older posts,” for evidence.

Rating: 30 seconds of unoriginal ideas.

Wieden + Kennedy. This campaign has been running since the Fax-Machine Era. It’s still funny most of the time. Wally should have received an EMMY or a 30 Seconds of Hell Awardy Award for his acting here. Disappointed, dejected, heartbroken. We’ve been there, pal. And, fuck the Yankees and the Red Sox.

Rating: 30 Seconds of Heaven

Well, holy hell. If there’s one thing the teabagging masses love it’s people dressed in colonial garb. If there’s another thing, it’s furries dressed in colonial garb. Rick Barber is flirting with Tea Party perfection here, especially since he’s ignoring some rather notable historical facts. He almost seems like he’s doing it on purpose.

Take it away Dave Weigel

He appeals to Washington as the owner of a distillery who “knows how tough it is to run a small business without a tyrannical government on your back.” But President Washington presided over, and approved, the first tax levied by the federal government — the 1791 whiskey tax. When the tax met resistance, he approved the assembling of militias to enforce the law and mobilization of agents to collect the revenue. So the Barber daydream of Washington angrily ordering a “gathering of armies” to oppose a tax is… well, entertaining, I guess

Anyway, with Tim James and Dale Peterson inexplicably losing their primaries, this Rick Barber J-hole will be supplying more than his share of idiot theatrics for the rest of the cycle.

Rating: Thirty Seconds of Hell