Fri 30 Jun 2006
I’m one of those people who watches the Superbowl every year just to see the creative new commercials; I really couldn’t give a crap about two NFL teams I have no connection to, but I do appreciate a well crafted 30 second message that entertains while it sells — you know, like that little gecko says. So it’s doubly (nay, triply) irritating to me to see what some cheapskate drug makers have done to the art of advertising. In addition to having all the appeal of scratching fingernails down a chalkboard, they’re mentally insulting in their implicit assumption that if you yammer something at me several times in a row, I will believe you. Then again, the GOP has been using this tactic quite successfully for several years (cut and run, cut and run, cut and run, they saw the same intelligence, they saw the same intelligence, they saw the same intelligence), so maybe that’s the philosophical origin of the HeadOn commercial. For those of you so blessedly in the dark about this primetime CNN ad, suck on this:
Okay, okay! Apply directly to the forehead! I get it already! But to give credit where credit is due, HeadOn was beat to the punch by Freedhem: the only one application hemorrhoidal cream! 
(Freedhem! The only one application hemorrhoidal cream! Freedhem! The only one applicaiton hemorrhoidal cream!) A three second ad repeated three times in rapid, monotonous succession. It’s quite possibly the most obnoxious thing on television these days after Bill O’Reilly, audibly unpleasant and intellectually pathetic. Are we really that Pavlovian?
Are you?
