This commercial pisses me off.

[fox]

When your child has a high fever, you go straight for the Children's Motrin.

When you're hurting, don't you wish there was a Mom's Motrin?

Am I the only one who thinks,

There is.

It's called Motrin.

?

Comments

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

And the thing is, at least where I'm sitting, that sort of idiocy backfires and becomes Other Product Loyalty.

There have been two occasions when commercials (both for white bread, which is probably a whole other subject right there) rubbed me so hard the wrong way that I refused to buy the product. One was for a brand called Schwebel's, and I don't remember the visual -- it featured the logo prominently and not much else -- but the audio was a gang of small children singing the most annoying jingle ever:

We want Schwebel's!
We want Schwebel's!
No other label will do!
We want Schwebel's!
We want Schwebel's!
No other label will dooo!
If you want your white bread
Tasty all the way through
Then just shout,
"WE WANT SCHWEBEL'S!
No other label will do!"

God. And the other was for a brand called Millbrook, and featured a girl in some species of dorm room or first apartment, opening a care package and talking on the phone with her mother. As she speaks ("Things are okay, but I miss you, and Daddy, and my room, and Millbrook bread -- you know, the good things"), she pulls out her old diary, her teddy bear, a picture of her family ... and a loaf of bread, god help us. "Oh, Mom! Millbrook bread! You always know how to make me feel right at home."

And there was no irony in this at all. I know tongue-in-cheek when I see it, and this thing was serious. I found the idea that this woman could miss a loaf of bread (or at the very least a loaf of store-bought bread) at the same level as she missed her family so revolting that I refused to buy it.

To this day, if I'm at the store and these are the only two brands on the shelf, I'll come home without bread. It's true that I remember both ads -- and we're talking about ten or fifteen years in the past, here, and don't forget that's a high percentage of my total [g] -- but not the way they wanted me to.

Folks who study marketing, take note.