the progressive girl

Ah i saw her that time

I remember Patricia Richardson, the mom from "Home Improvement," coming on some talk show & talking about her acting past. She had been in some O.B. tampons commercial (iirc as a bike cop) in the early '80s that she said "kept her from getting a job for 10 years." But look, she went on to be in that TV show, and then, judging by appearances, I think she was also the drummer for Sleater-Kinney. So there's hope for the Progressive girl.

― This is four-dimensional art; the 4th dimension is incredibly powerful. (Abbott), Tuesday, May 4, 2010 11:06 AM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this made me miss abbott

loooool that’s an excellent abbotttt post

speaking of the AT&T girl it really bugs me that Keegan-Michael Key is in the latest commercial and doesn't really do or say anything? like he's still a fairly big name, he still does a lot of movies and voice work, kinda pathetic to basically be an extra in a commercial isn't it?

if i was not a man, i would probably think men are trash.

― treeship.

counterpoint: i'm more fond of and less judgemental of men now that i don't feel like i have to _be_ one.

There is something distinctively straight male about concocting a murder fantasy about a woman one has a crush one, as mr. taibbi did upthread. I am glad this is less acceptable now than in 2010.

was Flo the first time a big company made a recurring character out of a regular employee?

i feel like this had a moment in the 70s as well: the maytag repair man, the "time to make the donuts" guy, etc

Good call. Time to make the donuts guy was a character named Fred the Breaker. I knew the actor who played him. He was also the Breakstones Sour Cream guy!

Fred the Baker not breaker!

see that shit would not fly today. remember the Sprint "can you hear me now?" guy jumping to T-Mobile? something about that just didn't feel right.

At some point, commercial broadcast television became a subsidiary of the auto insurance industry. We did not see this happening.

I feel like I have seen more ads for car insurance than I have for any other good or service. And they all have their cutesy memes and whatnot. The cavemen, Flo, the thing with the emu, the thing with the gecko, etc.

One used to see ads for beer or hamburgers or long-distance telephony or diabeetus supplies or whatever. At present, advertising is mostly about car insurance.

This is a strange timeline and I want out of it.

earlier in this same timeline, commercials were all about husbands berating their wives about coffee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnjjkgIO3Ck

now we get insurance-selling lizards

The proliferation of insurance commercials has always boggled my mind. Like who changes their insurance that much? I only pay renter’s insurance, but I haven’t changed it for like 20 years. Maybe I’m not the target demographic here.

If it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. Or so one would assume.

I dunno. Allegedly, John Wanamaker said that half of the money spent on advertising is wasted; you just don't know which half.

auto insurance is one of those things where everyone feels like they pay too much, I suspect, so people are likely to shop around for that at least once a year.

...

we could all save up to 15% by switching to geico

is what i heard

ya I think what it comes down to is everyone needs it, few really care much about how 'covered' they are, so it maybe just comes down to which ad you saw last. I mean I assume that's what their internal studies tell them, which may explain why very few of these commercials have anything to do with insurance at all.

personally the thing I find irritating about them is that they're so self-aware and cynical. like half the Geico ads now seem to be about how there are so many Geico ads on TV. same with the Progressive ads, they all have this subtext like "yeah we know commercials are annoying, so we're going to do you a favor by making them entertaining", but there's something wrong about that. its like when brands on Twitter start co-opting memes and act like teenage edgelords, shit that might be funny if it was a parody Wendy's account, but coming from the actual Wendy's account it's just makes you cringe. real stepdad-trying-way-too-hard vibes there. or maybe when a teacher tries to make something 'fun' but in a way that just reminds the class they're being held captive.

one fun thing about my current media diet is that the fewer commercials I see, the weirder & more impenetrable they seem. there are so many ads now that appear to just be self-referential callbacks to long-running campaigns and jokes that seem to have become completely untethered from whatever the original product or premise was, just some bizarre nonsequitur of a scene with the name of a product at the end of it, and its impossible to parse if you're not up on all the years of lore.

like the credit card company ads that feature rampaging vikings or norsemen or whatever? these uncouth vikings show up at a board meeting or a child's birthday party, do schtick for 15 seconds, and then yell the name of a credit card at the end. Ok? I assume at one point 15 years ago there was a punchline that made sense comparing credit cards to vikings somehow. but to see it with fresh eyes shorn of context its just like, wait, why was I shown that? I dont think it makes for "good advertising" per se, but it often makes watching TV these days an amusingly strange experience.

It's 2023 and the commercials are weirder than the shows

Frogbs and President K., this was one of the points made by (sorry) David Foster Wallace.

When Saturday Night Live started making fake commercials for things that didn't exist (like "edible diapers"), people started watching commercials differently.

People were like, "Is this a real ad or a fake one?" And then, predictably, advertisers started making real ads that seemed like they might be fake ads.

That's how we get J.K. Simmons in an apron with a helicopter feeding a lizard to an emu. Or whatever. Sorry, I can't keep track. There's also a caveman, or something.

TS: Milana Vayntrub vs. Stephanie Courtney

i never knew stephanie's real name until this recent article dropped, so milana

Sometimes I need to remember that she doesn't even do insurance ads.

It must be weird for her to have been rejected for just an audition for SNL sooooo many times, and then years later they're having Heidi Gardner do half-assed impression of Flo on the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcYT5FkIa_I

I like Milana Vayntrub but really dislike the AT&T ads. most of them make me feel like I have brain damage. but I've seen her in other stuff and she's pretty funny, though like Flo I think being such a recognizable face in commercials probably is gonna hinder her 'serious' career to the point where it probably just won't exist. ditto for all these other people.

True, but J.K. Simmons also gets to be in "Whiplash" or whatever. And then he can do another insurance ad.

Might be some sexism going on in this. Just a theory.

There is something distinctively straight male about concocting a murder fantasy about a woman one has a crush one, as mr. taibbi did upthread. I am glad this is less acceptable now than in 2010.

― treeship., Monday, November 27, 2023 6:40 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

some 2010-era village voice guy (f*nn*ss*y?) had a year-end blurb around then where he fantasized about sealing taylor swift in a well. i was like “oh, that’s definitely a cool thing to write in print”

Yes and also Flo is presented as an adult human woman. Then we look at the title of this thread.

O.J. Simpson was in car rental commercials when I was a child; I don't remember him being referred to as a boy.

fwiw I always found the character really annoying and I never wanted to f F. I'm sure that it is often true, the whole annoying being code for something else, but it's also not impossible that some people found her irritating because that was def the case for me.

lol at "f F"

I was trying not to be vulgar lol.

True, but J.K. Simmons also gets to be in "Whiplash" or whatever. And then he can do another insurance ad.

well right but this is a different thing because he was an accomplished actor before doing these commercials. whereas people like Flo and AT&T girl are primarily known for commercial work which I think is gonna give a lot of pause to casting directors. like I wouldn't really want Milana Vayntrub in my movie either because I think people so strongly associate her with a corporation and I don't want people to be thinking about AT&T when she's on screen.

i want to make a movie where the whole cast consists of human mascots like this. no in-jokes or acknowledgment of it. just a oscar bait style civil war movie starring these people.

whiplash (2014)

or you could just watch Oz

some 2010-era village voice guy (f*nn*ss*y?) had a year-end blurb around then where he fantasized about sealing taylor swift in a well. i was like “oh, that’s definitely a cool thing to write in print”

― ivy., Monday, November 27, 2023 11:10 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, googling bears that out. I only became aware of him recently, when listening to The Big Picture podcast, and there have been occasional comments about his excessive Taylor Swift opinions from earlier in his career.

i want to make a movie where the whole cast consists of human mascots like this. no in-jokes or acknowledgment of it. just a oscar bait style civil war movie starring these people.

― treeship., Monday, November 27, 2023 10:47 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

when I was a teenager I had RPG Maker 2k on my computer and in the first game I made the main character was Colonel Sanders. originally he had some chicken-themed attacks but I later realized it would be a lot funnier to just not acknowledge KFC at all. the next one I did you could play as Matthew Lesko, the crazy question mark suit infomercial guy, also without mentioning what he did, though that time it was because I didn't really understand it myself. I couldn't have been the only one obsessed with these dudes back then (not if Neil Cicierega is any indication). feel like these companies are way too in on the joke now for that to really work today though.

It must be weird for her to have been rejected for just an audition for SNL sooooo many times, and then years later they're having Heidi Gardner do half-assed impression of Flo on the show.

Maybe extra-weird because Gardner was also a Groundling and probably knows Courtney personally.

Milana Vayntrub is ridiculously attractive imho, but her AT&T character has an air of smugness that might fit with the tone of the ads but irks me.

The only thing I've knowingly seen Vayntrub in was the 2021 horror comedy whodunit Werewolves Within, which was a light, fun, cozy movie. She was great in it. Would like to see her in more leading roles.

Flo and AT&T lady are markedly less annoying than Liberty Mutual ads.

Maybe just exposure though, Liberty Mutual was the main Amazon Freevee advertiser when I was watching Bosch Legacy.

the Liberty Mutual ads are just really bad I think, like they're trying to do what Geico and Progressive are doing but they just don't have the talent to write anything remotely funny. except for the Liberty Biberty guy which I think was accidentally funny in a memorable way. so of course they have to keep bringing him back.

The Liberty Mutual ads are very bad at being clever or entertaining, but they are obviously good at making sure you remember the name of the company. They've succeeded in occupying part of our brain space and decorating it with their imagery. That's the main point.

Aimless is right. There was a Quizno's subs campaign a while back that definitely tried to push the annnoyingness envelope as far as it could go and... fuck. It worked. Because I just typed the name of a company I hadn't thought about in years. I don't think I've ever even eaten there.

What kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs?

here in Wisconsin there's only one Quizno's left so I don't suppose it worked too well. that said idk maybe their problem was insisting on making all their subs toasted which kinda jammed up the line. I thought they were good sandwiches. but yeah...that ad campaign was maybe a little too ahead of its time in the wrong ways

https://www.foxnews.com/story/coyote-visits-chicago-sandwich-shop

I’ll forever associate this story with Quiznos. Probably guerrilla marketing.

it does bum me out that we'll never see anything like the Folger's incest ad again