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Ad Report Card: Reader Picks and Pans

Rob WalkerPosted Monday, July 31, 2000, at 12:29 PM ET

Though still rather young, the Monday "Ad Report Card" has quickly become the inspiration for the most interesting e-mail sent to Moneybox. Some write to praise a specific commercial that is a favorite, others seek answers about a spot they find particularly puzzling, and many wish to vent about a commercial they truly despise. I've somewhat belatedly realized that I'll never have time to write about all of them--the thing about ads is, they just keep coming--so I thought this week I'd pause to pass along some mini "Ad Report Cards" from readers.

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Domino's Pizza's Very, Very Bad Andy. I got a couple of heated e-mails dissing the Domino's Pizza "Bad Andy" campaign. These spots revolve around an unpleasant muppet-type figure who is supposed to be a poor employee of the pizza chain. You can see three of these spots through the Adcritic.com Web site, using the QuickTime plug-in. In one, Bad Andy feigns a fever. In another, he tries to get a co-worker to stretch the pizza dough with a rolling pin, instead of by hand. In a third, he rearranges the letters on a daily-special sign. In each case, the tag line is "Bad Andy. Good Pizza." Reader reaction to this could be summarized as: Eh? And I agree with that assessment. At least the Taco Bell Chihuahua really wanted some Taco Bell food. Not only is the Andy character annoying and unfunny, but his antics seem unrelated to the product, as if Domino's had come up with its slogan by way of some Dada word game and worked backward from there. The reader grade: a flat F.

Discovery.com's Weird Science. I also got a couple of notes, one of them quite enthusiastic, about the ads for Discovery.com (a Web site associated with the cable network), which at the time I hadn't seen. I've since tracked them down on the Adcritic site: One features guys in meteor suits, another has guys in fish suits, a third stars guys in mosquito suits, and that mosquito pair returns in a fourth spot. In each commercial, the costumes and the dialogue are self-consciously bad, drawing attention to the fakery with stiffly delivered lines, frequent glances off-camera, presumably at a teleprompter, and so on. The fish guys, for instance, slosh around in a set designed to crudely represent the interior of a shark's stomach. "Hello fellow partially eaten fish," says one. "Have you heard about the Web site called Discovery.com?" "Why yes," his counterpart replies. "It has interesting facts about the world we live in, and lot's of practical information on stuff like health, traveling, and pets." "Wow." And so on. The pro-Discovery.com reader insists that there is a transcendent brilliance about all this, reminiscent of the early Letterman's sophisticated relationship to irony. I'm not sure if I quite get it, but the ads do stand out and make you wonder about Discovery.com, which is the point. And I do kind of enjoy the second of the two mosquito ads, which seems to consist of outtakes of the two costumed guys, both of whom wear glasses, clumsily failing to "land" as they are jerked about by obvious suspension wires. At one point there's no dialogue at all for about 10 seconds as one mosquito-man struggles to get his balance. It's authentically strange. Does it make for great advertising? Well in this case the reader gets the last word, so the ad gets an A.

Gillette's Dull Logic. Finally, there's a razor ad that I have not seen and have not been able to track down, but that I can't resist mentioning. Apparently it's for a Gillette razor, and is aimed at women, reports a reader in Toronto. "Bouncy women in pink and purple minidresses jaunt around the set, with go-go dancing moves and childlike leg-swinging," she writes. The ad's tag ends on " 'Just have fun!' I can't see any woman saying, 'Gee, razor burn, what fun!' So who is this ad for?" asks our correspondent. "Is it misogyny or just plain stupid?" I'm keeping an eye out for this spot. As described, it certainly sounds absurd--and doesn't seem to be scoring many points with potential customers. I suppose I should hold off on the actual grade until I've seen the ad--but I think you can guess how the reader would rate it, and it doesn't sound promising for Gillette.

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Rob Walker writes the Ad Report Card for Slate.

COMMENTS

Reader Response from The Fray:

Anti-union propaganda? My theory about the consciously-bad Discovery.com commercials is that they are taking a stab at the current SAG/AFTRA strike against commercials. By making commercials with people who are obviously not professional--and yet make them entertaining, memorable, and therefore functional--Discovery, or perhaps their ad agency, is saying "Don't want to work, eh? Well who needs you?!"

--Matt Heffernan

(To reply, click here.)

As a longtime commercial viewer and pizza consumer, I feel I can say without hyperbole that the Bad Andy ads are the worst ads I've ever seen, in concept and in execution. Clearly they are trying to create a lovable new character to identify with the chain, a dubious proposition to begin with. But actually putting the character in the tagline is a big mistake. Do they really want viewers equating their pizza with a rowdy, vermin-like furry creature who lives in the kitchen and mucks around with the food? The ads are simply annoying, though they are memorable. Just like Burger King's Herb.

--Peter Orvetti

(To reply, click here.)

I thought Bad Andy was a weak ripoff of the dog sock puppet from that pet supply company. The ads aren't funny and portray all Dominoes humans as losers. Pizza anyone?

--Peter R.

(To reply, click here.)

[Note from the Fray Editor: Now this is why it pays to read a real cutting-edge, serious-minded financial column like "Moneybox". Because recently we had a page in which Rob Walker, the Fray posters and your Fray Editor turned their considerable combined brainpower to the important question of sock puppets. Serious researchers, click here.]

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