We are not sheep

I find it hard to believe that companies actually pay good money to advertising firms to come up with some of this stuff.  Why would anybody buy a product from a company that is constantly yelling at them during every commercial break?  One of the most wonderful inventions of the twentieth century was the mute button - heavily used during election seasons.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things. - Dan Quayle

776-5577

Was, and still is the telephone number of pizza delivery restuarant in Manhattan KS.  Manhatten KS is home to Kansas State University (my alma mater, BSc. Physics, '91).  While I was studying there a radio commerical started airing that simply repeated "776-5577" over and over and over and over and over and ... until last few seconds when a voice would announce "Pizza Shuttle, when you need it within 30 minutes."  It took only a few days for this commerical to become the most hated and reviled radio commerical in Manhattan. 

However ...

After a busy night of studing and/or drinking and/or whater, no one needed the phone book to find the telephone number for Domino's or Pizza Hut, you simply sang the hated commerical that had been branded into your mind and dialed 776-5577 and ordered your pizza.  Within only a few months they were the most successful pizza establishments in town.  It was one of the most brillant advertisment campaigns I'd ever seen.

Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!

SteveMule

Now I'm going to have that stuck in my head all day...

Reminds me of Bush administration marketing techniques. Apparently, the ad was made in-house using bits of an earlier ad - which they had to edit and remove any medicinal claims to avoid trouble with the FDA. I love this bit from the LA Times:

But, come on, this is some kind of postmodern gag, right, a parody of the hyper-hard sell? Alas, no. "We didn't intend it to be a joke," [director of sales and marketing] Charron said. "The idea is that all our competitors are pills. Our product you apply directly to the forehead. That's what makes it different. We wanted for people to remember it. It's the only product that you apply directly to the forehead." He kept saying that. This is the ad you get when Rain Man is your VP of marketing.

James Randi sez:

Each .2-ounce (<6 grams!) stick contains a “12X” concentration (?) of White Bryony – a type of vine – as one of the two active ingredients. That means that the whole damn stick contains 1 part of ingredient in 1,000,000,000,000 parts of wax, or a stick contains .000,000,000,005,67 grams of "ingredient!"

 (The sad this is, this is exactly the kind of thing my wife would buy. It'll sit right next to the %@%$@ $300 a box BreathRight strips).

"We are not sheep"

Oh yes we are!

It is relentless, and may well be the catch-phrase of 2006.
It is also far more enigmatic than "I've fallen and I can't get up."

Amazing since legal fears prevent any actual mention of what the product actually does or why or how. Perhaps the mystery of the product (or its sheer annoyance factor) has made so many people talk about it. Was it devised at Gitmo maybe??

I guess "Rub Wax On Your Forehead!!" isn't compelling.

(link...)