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What Spot Makes You Change Channels?

C

CorporateSuit

What commercial on the air makes you change channels or mute your radio until it's over?

Mine is currently the ad for "Dinobite," some dog/cat supplement. Everyone is on the phone. Used to start with, "Eww! Get the smelly dog off me!" And that one woman spells out the name twice....followed by "DOT COM!"

I can't stand it. It's so fake, so.....argh. So repulsive, I remember the product. Damn it.
 
♫ "1 877 Kars For Kids.......1 877 Kars For Kids......1 877 Kars For Kids......1 877 Kars Fo........"♫

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

(Grabs hammer from toolbox, runs to the radio, violently smashes it to bits......)
 
While very bad, "KARS for Kids" is actually a PSA, not a "Commercial." I should have been more specific.

#2 for me is any ad for Dr. Jerry "Libido" Mixon and his quackery medical center.
 
"This is Bob.....Bob takes Enzyte....Thanks to Enzyte, Bob now has a facial disorder, Bob's face is now permanently stuck in a creepy smile. So is his wife. Unlike Bob, she can tell everyone it's just the botox. But Bob really needs facial reconstructive-..." ZAP!
 
A lot of people said the same thing about Tom Shane and Sunny Kobe Cook back in the day. But they made great bank.

And replying with bold, enlarged font is equally as annoying.
 
Anyone who buys a car at DAVE SMITH MOTORS! in bumblefork, Idaho, deserves the trouble they're bound to have with it on the drive back to Seattle. As I see it, any advertiser who thinks they have to scream, visually and otherwise, to make an impact in their ads has got to be disreputable. Or that's the image they convey to me. I guess that also goes for Poulsbo RV and a few others like. (Any business that thinks they need a flashy electronic billboard to distract motorists and light up the night sky with oversaturated color seems to fit into this same mold.)

OK, so I remember their name (but not necessarily their location). Sure, some dumb sucker might go for it, because of all the flash and noise, and maybe that's how the owner of the dealership is making their boat payments. But what a turn off it is for your station for those of us who don't care to be screamed at, and who have to run for the mute button or change channels when these kinds of ads come on. Same holds true for KIRO-FM, and their super loud ads for Dave Smith Motors and a few others.
 
Kellogg, ID. Roughly 300 miles as the crow flies from here. And I can just get my new car in the Seattle-Tacoma area, not in the middle of nowhere Idaho, no thank you.

-crainbebo
 
Re: Dave Smith Motors in Kellogg, ID. I did their on-hold voice-overs for many years. They may be misunderstood. I am not here to defend them, but the strategy was to build business over a wide area lacking dealerships. Eventually, this became aimed at the Spokane market, (as to offer better deals), as Kellogg is only about an hour east of Spokane. Somewhere, somehow, they aimed at even a larger area. I don't blame them for trying to do this, as most of their business was not from Kellogg. Smaller towns can provide better deals, and this was their strategy.

Beyond that, moving to tv, any spot that talks about cancer therapy are depressing to me, and those immediately aim my hand at the remote. And then of course there is Flo from progressive. Right up there with cancer treatment.
 
Although some of the information presented on them is interesting, those all night informercials that blanket the local and regional talk stations overnight on weekends turn me off. They repeat them too often.

Usually I'll switch to sports talk when they come on.

The shorter commercials don't bother me that much. I usually can tune them out if I need to.

There was a period during the early 2000's, however, when the spot sets seemed a lot longer than they are now, that I would just turn the radio off as soon as the commercials came on.
 
@AQH - At least Shane and Cook were selling actual useful products. And I applaud Cook for taking herself out of the TV spots and having someone else to do them.

Mixon is just selling snake oil. And do a search on him and "sex"....You'll see that he likes to get up-close and personal with his patients.
 
SKC did not take herself out of the spots, she went through nasty divorce and ex-husband canned her as the spokesperson as part of his revenge.
 
CorporateSuit said:
@AQH - At least Shane and Cook were selling actual useful products. And I applaud Cook for taking herself out of the TV spots and having someone else to do them.

Mixon is just selling snake oil. And do a search on him and "sex"....You'll see that he likes to get up-close and personal with his patients.
Click to expand...

Point taken, but integrity and just annoying are two different things. If creepiness and past history count, there are plenty of stories that can be shared about local talent, past and present, who you wouldn't think do such odd things.
 
Two, first the Empire Today ad that looks medieval (ANNOYING!), and the CenturyLink "do the math" TV commercial with cable vs. CenturyLink's 19.99 for 5 years offer. It airs EVERY commercial break on Q13, Joe TV, CW11 etc, and it gets really annoying!

-crainbebo
 
FWIW - there's a "rock remix" of the "Kars For Kids" PSA running now that's a whole lot easier to tolerate that the old one.
 
I heard the "remixed" version of the "Kars For Kids". If by "easier to tolerate" you mean I don't instantly cringe and throw the radio out the window, then yes...its much better! :D

And for some reason, even though it is not as annoying as KFK and a very serious topic, I despise the Washington State Suicide Prevention PSA's that creep into evening Mariners broadcasts on KIRO. Nothing like kicking back listening to a good ballgame then the first spot you hear is "Every 30 seconds, someone in the United States kills themselves". I don't know...I set my beer and/or smoke down...big buzz kill knowing some chap is about to bite the Big Bazooka by the end of the PSA.

Honorable Mention: "Cars cost less in Puyallup!" That gimmick about driving to some distant suburban auto mall to save a few hundred bucks is basically played out in every rated market in this great nation of ours since 1990-95...I just don't like it...not very creative anymore IMO

Lastly, for TV, (though my viewership has lessened since being here) the Humane Society commercials drive me bonkers...more specifically the one with Sarah McLaughlin and some of her depressing music. I feel miserable after watching abused animals quivering around a camera while hearing a sappy light AC song, and I don't feel like giving them money after watching it either. I will turn the channel just to watch another commercial!

Radio-X
 
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For me, on radio, it's the insurance spot where the "representative" reenacts a conversation with Joe," also played by himself, using a filter. So fake, so annoying. At the end a link is provided to respond to the spot, or get more info, or something, but the link is apparently specific to the ad.
Makes me wonder if it has anything to do with insurance at all, or if it's just to see who will respond to an ad, no matter how bad it is.
It went away for a while, but I'm hearing it again lately.
 
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