Miracle Whip still the sandwich spread for rugged drifters

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxTA4iq98lw

Back when Combat! blog was young and wild, we discussed Miracle Whip’s “Don’t be so mayo” campaign, which positioned the Depression-era mayonnaise alternative as a uniquely millennial condiment. On the heels of that success, Chicago’s mcgarrybowen agency has launched the “Miracle Whip and proud of it” campaign, which further distinguishes the Kraft sandwich lube consumer from the man in the gray flannel suit. The ad above, entitled “Drew’s sandwich,” reminds us that Miracle Whip aficionados live in a kind of shadow society, a fraternity of outlaws who acknowledge one another with smoldering looks. Miracle Whip is for badasses. Put it in your mouth and shut up.

Continue reading

Authenticity Watch: Drip coffee

The snooty waiter waits.

The best part of dogsitting Stringer is watching TV, and the best part of watching TV is seeing commercials. Neither of those statements is what rhetoricians call “true,” but my ad consumption is way up over the last week anyway, probably as a consequence of my inability to work the DVR. Don’t cry for me, because finally I can access the fundamental function of advertising: telling me what’s real. If, like me, you were 14 years old when “alternative” became the most popular genre of music, you know that large portions of American culture are fake. The mainstream is a powerful if misguided force, and it is up to us rugged individuals to discern what is authentic from trends, pretensions, corporate drones and simulacra. And we have nothing to go by besides A) our visceral intuition of the sublime and B) Maxwell House commercials. Video after the jump.

Continue reading

Everything will be permitted once the new Axe comes out

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NN0-AWiv4k

Pete Jones sent me this commercial for the new Axe odor replacement product, which will apparently render meaningless all previously articulated principles of morality and real estate. Those are three jewelry stores next door to one another in the opening shot, and they’re not in the diamond district. They appear to be on Lafayette Street, but that’s not important. What’s important is that everyone understand the premise of this deodorant ad: jewelry store robbery, apparently involving machine gun fire. You can hear it for the first two seconds of the video, followed immediately by our robber emerging from a store that is definitely in the diamond district now. Since the glass windows are unbroken and there’s no blood on him, I can only assume that all six of his shots hit center mass.

Continue reading

Seeking children, McDonald’s re-deploys clown

"It's actually parked out back, if you want to get out of here."

You may not have noticed,* but the last few years of McDonald’s commercials have been conspicuously free of Ronald McDonald, the clown so brightly colored that only a child‘s retinas are innocent enough to look at him. It turns out that L. Ron McDonald has been the object of an ongoing campaign of protest from various height/weight-appropriate killjoys, who argue that he is designed to sell unhealthy food directly to children. That is obviously true. When was the last time you saw a clown convince an adult of anything, much less what to put in his mouth? Whereas that works on kids all the time. With their McCafe marketing campaign and their new emphasis on salads, apple slices and other substances that will not immediately stop a mouse’s heart, McDonald’s has been working the adult/child divide for the last several years, so it’s only logical that they would again release Ronald McDonald into the wild. He is back; he is still simultaneously nonthreatening and extremely disturbing, and he is definitely for kids.

Continue reading

Verizon Thunderbolt will empower, baffle you

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXkqpul38wE&feature=player_embedded#at=12

 

I have watched this advertisement for the Verizon Thunderbolt several times now, and all I can say about the actual phone is that it looks hard to charge. Those of you who have seen The Daily Show or a Shia LaBeouf movie in the past three months will recognize this latest in a series of tone-deaf Verizon commercials that present the smartphone as an alien product that smashes trees and evokes submissive awe in rural people. Like that spot—in which a young man waits eagerly for his new phone to arrive and, once he actually gets it, decides to hurl it as far away as possible—this commercial manages to capture my two main fears about any new smartphone:

1) I have to charge it for eight hours every 16 hours.

2) It may provide evidential proof that I am some sort of douchebag.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Continue reading