Chevy – “Nick and Hunting”
In the spirit of the holidays, Chevy has introduced a new campaign staring the one and only “Nick”. Hopefully you got that this is in reference to good old Saint Nicholas, otherwise known as Santa Claus. It’s possible this is a cheap politically correct way of throwing Santa Claus into the mix, but we’re pretty sure it’s simply playing off the average viewers knowledge of Mr. C’s stereotypical look and asking, “what would you do, if Santa was your Car Salesmen?”
Each ad in this campaign plays with different aspects of the Santa character, such as milk and cookies, is his beard real and even his reign deer – which leads us to our ad in question. Jolly old Nick, like the great Chevy salesmen he is, begins a conversation with a customer who explains that he’d love a truck for hunting…deer in particular. The customer gets one look at Nick and quickly changes his story (Santa doesn’t want you hunting his reindeer now, does he?). What ensues is a bit long and overdone, but awkwardly funny enough that it’s enjoyable. Reminiscent of a Seinfeld or an Office sketch – it’s fun to see this customer crash and burn in front of Santa…Nick…whatever.
When all is said and done, Chevy did do the smart thing and cut the commercial down to a 30 second spot, which does lack a bit of the humor from the original but is much better suited for the television audience. Looking forward to seeing what other idiosyncrasies Chevy can come up with for ol’ Nick in future commercials.
The Shelter Pet Project – “Sandbox”
The Shelter Pet Project has been around for awhile with some pretty funny commercials staring your favorite lovable pet, complete with talking monologue. They started out with cartoons, progressed to the E*TRADE baby technique of making the mouths move and finally for their most recent campaign have completely internalized the animals discourse.
This looks to be a good move and is quite a bit funnier than the older versions. The talking mouths are ok, but quite unnatural. It always seemed like animals with mouths that move like a humans, especially since they obviously lack the same muscular structure, is just creepy. The day dogs learn how to curl their R’s…we’re out.
The Shelter Pet Project makes some funny commercials that have just enough humor to keep you interested in what the project actually is. It isn’t hard to figure out that it’s a commercial for adopting a dog or cat and once you found yourself at the website, it’s pretty hard not to want to adopt one. The personalities of each of the animals in their commercials are very fun and we hope they continue to put out more of these. It’s like viral cat videos, but with the animals thought process provided for us…what’s next…catvertising?
Samsung – “Next Big Thing”
This week, Samsung decided to grow some apples and pick a few fights (more puns!). At first it would seem that Samsung is touting that the release of their next phone will come with long lines of adoring fans waiting for the day it launches – this idea turns quickly, though. These “fans” seem a bit too obsessed about waiting in line, and a bit too concerned with the updates and all around just a bit too fanboy cliche…they sound more like a different company.
Then comes the ‘shocking’ reveal – these are iPhone fans, not samsung fans waiting in line. All the Samsung fans are outside, doing every day activities and enjoying the use of their 4g phones with super big screens. The iPhone users, who start to ask questions (uh oh, Apple) get a taste of the Samsung and they seem to like it. Except of course for the grand hipster-cliche-stereotype of them all: the “too creative for samsung” guy, who’s actually just a barista.
We have to give Samsung some props for this particular pie thrown in apples direction. They do bring up some serious concerns for iPhone users and ‘solve’ them with their own phone while providing funny back and forth banter between the two users (even though Samsung has had some security issues of their own). When iPhone was first released, comparing the two would be like comparing apples to oranges…completely different products – but as the market shifted towards the android, it seems Apple may actually have some cleaning up to do. It’s not like Apple never tried to start a fight with anyone…
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