Regarding Newt Gingrich’s favorite Super Bowl ad

By Dan Brooks in advertising 1 Comment
Stringer Bell Faswell circa 2008

Stringer Bell Faswell circa 2008

Obviously, Stringer is the cutest puppy in the world, even now that he is an old pro. Last night, a Budweiser advertisement featuring the second-cutest puppy in the world aired during the Super Bowl, and people loved it. According to USA Today’s Ad Meter, “Lost Dog” was the most popular ad of the broadcast. Coincidentally, Newt Gingrich announced on Twitter that it was his favorite, too. Newt Gingrich is a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, to paraphrase the De Lome Letter. Video after the jump.

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Miracle Whip still the sandwich spread for rugged drifters

By Dan Brooks in advertising 2 Comments

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.

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House candidate shoots down drone in ad

By Dan Brooks in Campaign Advertisements 3 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJBcBx1XFU4

I don’t like it any more than you do, but in 2014, we have to admit that shooting stuff has become a genre of campaign advertisement. Senator Joe Manchin arguably invented it when he shot a copy of the cap and trade bill in 2010. Last month, Alabama candidate for US House Will Brooke shot and then mulched the affordable care act, in a spot bearing the electorally ominous tagline “let’s do some damage.” The marksman above is Matt Rosendale, Montana senator and Republican candidate for Montana’s lone House seat. He hates the federal government so much he wants to be a part of it, but only so he can get close enough to hogtie it or shoot it with a zip gun or whatever.

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The hands-free Whopper is not real, you guys

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd2YLgZqf3A

Brad alerted me last weekend to the existence of the hands-free Whoppper, ostensibly a product released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Burger King in Puerto Rico. Sadly, the HFW is not real. When you know that it is not real, the commercial above looks like exactly what it is: a gentle exercise in absurdity that also provides occasion to say that word “Whopper” 78 times. It seems impossible to believe that such a product could exist. Yet the hands-free Whopper was the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning, and I was all set to write some funny (read: lazy) screed about it. Apparently, I was not alone. At all.

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Why is this commercial so wonderful?

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 16 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_0fyUYB3cA

It is a very specific culture that produces this auto insurance commercial, in which Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo, a man from Africa who played professional basketball in Houston, knocks various objects out of the air. It is an ultra-specific culture that finds it hilarious, as I do. Probably it is helped along by my predilection for slapstick. I submit that certain elements of it are pure art, though, such as the sequence in the grocery store aisle that begins at :16. Motumbo has to be standing so close to the kid to get that reverse shot, such that he becomes conspicuously absent from the shot preceding it. Your brain has to go backwards in time and add him in. It is a visual expression of the incongruity theory of humor—something that was itself technically impossible until about a hundred years ago—and it makes it.

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