Verizon Thunderbolt will empower, baffle you

By Dan Brooks in advertising 1 Comment

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.

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Verizon Droid commercial in your face, completely baffling

By Dan Brooks in advertising, consumerism, corporatocracy 5 Comments
Previously the most terrifying advertisement involving phones

Previously the most terrifying advertisement involving phones

First of all, those of you especially perceptive readers may have noticed that Combat! blog now contains ads. Right now, for example, it contains a big, full-color ad urging you to fight against the government takeover of health care, which I think is frankly hilarious. Also right now, the ads are completely effing up my layout, because I haven’t yet determined how to configure them properly. We should be working that out shortly. I’m going to be honest with you: I was vehemently against putting advertisements on the site, but the five unpaid interns who actually write the posts in Combat! blog and answer the Combat! phone while I’m out getting illicit massages outvoted me. Now they’re getting paid those sweet sweet Google AdSense bucks, and you—just like you do everywhere else—will have to start averting your eyes from certain portions of Combat! blog so as not be hypnotized by genius marketing. Finally—and this is actually very important—DO NOT JUST CLICK ON THE ADS A BUNCH OF TIMES. Seriously—that won’t help me, and Google will only realize what you’ve done and ban me from AdSense, as they did Sarah Aswell when I tried to help her in the same fashion last year. Don’t click on the ads unless you’re actually interested in buying gold or night vision goggles or whatever. Also also, I’ve been screwing around with the sidebars, so now you can see a live-updated list of the most recent comments on the left side of the page, which today features my exchange with a dude who is strongly against the interracial kiss in that Levi’s commercial. So it looks like my grandpa finally figured out DSL.

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New Levi’s commercial offers hope to dirty, half-underwater America

By Dan Brooks in consumerism, counterculture, fake cool, hipsters, oppositional culture 25 Comments
Woman, you also need a shirt.

Bitch, you also need a shirt.

If you’ve recently been to a movie targeted at 18- to 34-year-olds—Zombieland, say, or Couples Retreat, which are basically the same movie when you think about it—you’ve probably seen thew new “Go Forth” line of Levi’s commercials. The campaign involves a variety of spots for film, print and television, but the one I like best opens on a flickering neon sign half-submerged in floodwater. The sign reads, of course, “America,” and the ad proceeds—over a wax-cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading his famous poem of the same name—to show us a series of slums, riots and scenes of rural poverty, intercut with shots of dirty children/manchildren running around in blue jeans, ending with the gunshot crack of fireworks and the admonition, “Go forth.” As usual, by “like best” I mean “am most disturbed by.” Video after the break:

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