I'm sure that more than a few people have watched and discussed this most recent Quizno's ad, but it's been on my mind to address it myself and I am desperate need of material for my blog as it's already 10:30 pm on the second day of the Blogging Challenge.
Hopefully, you clicked on the link to that video, maybe hit the back button on your browser of choice because you forgot to open in a new tab (CTRL+Click - who knew there'd be a technical side to this ...) and have returned to read the remainder of my blog.
The basic premis of this commercial, as I see it, is that this particular purveyor of toasted sandwiches has developed an unnatural relationship with the oven. The last time I remember hearing anything about people having unnatural relationships with kitchen appliances was Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage, which uses this same story telling device to take shots at the church of scientology.
In the song A Token of My Extreme (lyrics here), it is explained to the tragic hero of our story, Joe, that he is a *latent appliance fetishist* and that his life will only be fulfilled when he joins the Church of Appliantology and chooses the appropriate appliance mate. In his case, it ends up being a toaster that speaks German. I won't go any further in to this story because it gets both disturbing and hard to follow at this point of the album. Plus, I totally have more to say about Quizno's.
Mt point in all of this is simple, really, and it is this:
What the hell, Quizno's? What. the. hell? ...
All of this sexual inuendo about this dude and his toaster doesn't really make me want a sandwich. If anything, it makes me question exactly what you do with these *torpedo* sandwiches before you try to pawn them off on my for $4.99.
And this isn't the first time that Quizno's has gone creepy with their commercials. Long before a baby was telling you all about the stock market and how easy it is (child's play, really), Quizno's had Bob. He's a little baby that acts like a grown up. This, in my opinion, isn't a good thing - it's just plain creepy. To top out the creep factor, I'm pretty sure Artie Lang from The Howard Stern show is his voice.
The other weird-ass marketing ploy Quizno's threw our way a few years ago was the concept of a maybe-dead-rat-maybe-levitating-marsupial flying thing that sings to you about Quizno's on occasion.
I get that all of these companies are trying to be cool and all, with their weird *viral* marketing, but if you're going to do this - do it right. Like Skittles. That's how you make a weird commercial.
I'm not sure if I really made my point about Quizno's, I just see a lot of links. Sounds like a blog to me: no coherent point + links + a self-depricating closing sentence which makes it sound like I didn't take this seriously (I did) so that I can't be at fault if I'm wrong.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment