I'm minding my own business last night watching television, reveling that House is back because I really like that show (I knew more than one person who suggested, prior to my TKR in March, the show's main character and I shared a personality. I accidentally hit that person with my cane. Fourteen times, according to the arrest warrant) and up popped a commercial for a synthetic motor oil with a character with a Scots accent, who smacks people while shouting 'think with your dipstick, Jimmy!' I dimly remember this spot from much earlier this year-I'd hate to think they brought it back for me.
This commercial is so bad on its best day it could only hope to be stupid and offensive. As it is, I just sat there with a head full of questions, asked nearly as much in sorrow as in anger. The commercial plugs the only oil (the non synthetic variety from back in the day) the Kfz-Meister at Autohaus Winter would allow to be used in the BMW 518 we had in Offenbach.
I'm not sure if I were the only American patron the dealership had but I was the only customer forbidden to buy tools from their parts department because as the mechanic explained to the parts people, 'the gentlemen doesn't know how to work on our cars--or any other cars.'I just assumed the oil was a serious and sober product. Obviously it doesn't mix well with alcohol, at least not at whatever ad agency they were using to come up with commercials.
All I know about the place where my oil is changed in the car I drive now, is that it's not the one the guy with the dipstick is flogging. How many of us know what brand of oil, or what weight, we're putting in the vehicles we drive? I write down the brand of gasoline and the mileage I get from every tankful, every time I put gas in my car, and have no idea what I have from this 'data', if that's what it is.
I think I could be practicing a variant of an out take from Deming's Red Bead Experiment, but I'm not thinking with my dipstick. And if you've been elected to public office, bookmark that url for the Red Bead stuff. We're gonna talk a LOT about that concept in the coming months as newly elected people who wanted to change the world take office and swiftly learn the limits of their new powers, and why 'power' is a pretty stupid word to use. And how ashamed should all of those with opposable thumbs be that there's a Facebook page dedicated to this pap?
Later in the stop set (commercial advertising cluster) there was a thirty-second spot for car insurance that plays the company name off of the notion of a Lizard or Not (as opposed to the Wizard of Oz) involving a temporary employee filling in for the company mascot. That you have to keep your eye on the whole frame and see the full candy dish on the desk helps make the cut in of the now-empty dish as we hear the payoff line, 'aw, he ate all my mints!' really sing. Whatever those ad guys are drinking they should share with the oil guys.
There's two thing I never understood about the oil spot. This is obviously the best idea for a campaign they had-so what did the second best idea look like? Could it have been worse than that Super Bowl TV ad that fired gerbils out a cannon and bounced them off a wall (I could remember what was being sold in that spot, could you?) And secondly, do you think if we had a 105mm howitzer we could jam that Glaswegian bully into it as payback for Jimmy?
-bill kenny
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