I don't really know where to begin on this one, it is just as wrong, if not wronger than the middle-aged women standing around in towels commercial that has been creeping me out lately. Best Buy has already commited the number 1 ad cliche of all time in the last 6 months, and now this... Apparently, they thought that hiring uber-prodigy-thriller director M. Night Shyamalan to do a spot about GPS would be a good idea. Take a look:

It just so creepy... The guy rolling into place at the stop sign, standing in the water. And then talking in the robotic women's voice towards the end. This is by far one of the creepiest commercials I have seen in a long time.

It was only a matter of time. Even that stalwart of hip, progressive advertising, Nike, has succumbed to the siren song of the most popular advertising cliche of our generation. They have done their best to "amp it up" and "mix the bourgeois with the royals" by featuring some lesser knowns with some greater knowns. Observe the carnage below:

Though the footage has been color corrected very nicely, has a uniform camera bobble and delivers some good one-liners (with the exception of USC's Pete Carroll's "French Toast" line), it comes across as completely sophomoric and tired. I am amazed that Nike is turning out the same kind of commercial your local Division II collegiate athletic department is creating.

Perhaps I underestimate the power of this cliche, but shame on you, Nike. I thought poorly of Best Buy when they recently pulled this cliche off, but not you... Say it isn't true Nike! 

Congratulations to 2008 Superbowl Champions, the New York Giants. I'm not sure if it was their incredible defense or that escape from a 3 man sack by Eli Manning that won it for them, but you can be sure the little piece before the game that demonstrated the #1 Ad cliche of all time didn't hurt:

And this weekend, the hits just kept coming. All these below are from some casual weekend TV watching while dodging pillows and laser pointer beams from my 4 year old earth son. I don't know what it is about televised college sports, but every school must feel compelled to run a spot featuring a perfectly distributed racial student body pouring stuff into beakers and talking with their "other race" friend at a table just outside the student body cafeteria. These commercials are usually on par with political spots, and have meaningless words like "Integrity" and "Commitment" floating across the screen. I'm not sure who does the media buys on these spots, but the only time you ever see them are during a game for the offending school. Why not run them some other time when you could get an audience other than alumni?

It's no wonder then that many of these collegiate spots commit the #1 ad cliche of all time... The one below from Virginia Tech- "We are...", a reference to the moving convocation speech held in honor of those killed and injured at the April shootings last year. This spot absolutely nails the cliche perfectly.

I've recorded several others because I can't seem to turn on the TV without seeing them. I finally figured out purchased a way to record into my laptop from my DVR so these should look a little better. Here's a recent alt version of the cliche from Kia:

And here's another uninspired version of the #1 ad cliche of all time from NHL team, the Carolina Hurricanes. They even use the exact same "I pledge..." line from the Best Buy version of same (see below).

These ads are everywhere and don't show any signs of slowing. Until something else like the Beer commercials where the beer makes hot situations cold comes along, I don't foresee this dropping out of the number 1 slot anytime soon. 

Uh-oh. There's a new spot airing from Best Buy where each employee speaks in the broken sentences. "I pledge..." "I pledge..." etc. etc... Will someone please stop this madness? This cliche has gone so far beyond the realm of over used, it is absurd. In fact, I am officially promoting this foolishness from #3 to #1. That's right, it has overtaken the formerly number one cliche, Man in Business casual drives in car down curvy sections of the Pacific Coast Highway.

I apologize for the crappy video quality, as both my Time Warner DVR and Panasonic DV camera have conspired against me and I can't for the life of me figure out how to get an analog or digital signal from the DVR into my camera. I finally found the S-Video input on the camera after 2 years of looking (it was behind the battery- Clever!), but couldn't find the required power cord to run the camera off of AC power to make the rig work.

This commercial aired numerous times during the AFC and NFC Championship football games and it's embarrassing an agency in the year 2008 would output this tired, overplayed and under-effective treatment. I am going to start recording all of the spots I find using this treatment. I have one below, from a Fishing Reel company, who no doubt is paying about $35 (US) for their marketing advice, but who end up getting the same ineffective commercial as Best Buy.

This one from FLW:

I was watching the NBA playoffs a while back and saw a new :30 from TeamUSA basketball- It was the perfect rendition of the broken sentence ad cliche. It was even less inventful than others in that everyone was wearing the same shirt (a "Uniform" I suppose), and they were all standing on the same set. The director mercifully gave us a couple of different shot sizes to break up the monotony but otherwise the spot perfectly follows the #2 Advertising Cliche of all time.

(video to come) 

If anyone knows of where I can link to this commercial, please let me know. 

I don't normally do this, but I must issue a Cliche Alert! Deconstructed objects reconstructing themselves are appearing everywhere on the airwaves and it shows no signs of slowing. Even Ford AND Chevrolet have gotten in to the act and are airing similar commercials featuring the same gimmick.

Here's the Ford one, originally aired during the 2007 Super Bowl. 

Here's a link to the making of the spot... 

 I'm still looking for a link to the latest Chevrolet spot, but they even feature a fighter jet canopy floating towards the car, an obvious slight to the former Aircraft designers at Saab. HP once sported a campaign where pieces of things floated through the air, and there are several new spots out taking on a "Transformer" theme- gadgets deconstructing themselves and reconstructing into something else.

Think twice if you are pitching a spot/campaign using this theme- it could be dead before you shoot it. 

This is quite possibly the most popular commercial cliche of all time. A man in a business casual suit drives his car down the Pacific Coast Highway, most likely on one of those curvy sections that is not right on the edge of the ocean, but slightly inland. The man's date/spouse/life partner sits beside him, dressed just as smart. They look at each other and smile knowingly. What is it? What are they so happy about? They're getting SAG scale for the day- probably about $575. I'm not sure if that's worth smiling about, but possibly it's because they are contributing to the greatest advertising cliche of all time.

What is the.... What is the...  What is the deal... the deal.... the deal?  I want to know.... I want... I want... I want to know.... I can't turn on your earth televisions without seeing some commercial, usually pharmaceutical in nature, that features the rainbow coalition rattling off the same script and cut together in a schizophrenic way. Each person is given the same script, usually one line or less, and asked to say the line. The editor then cuts a :30 out of just one line and a tag. The tag usually features the stuttered line in full, spoken by a professional voice over talent.

I actually worked on one of the seminal commercials of this cliche, the Nexium "I want to know" spot. The commercial had been airing for a year or two, and featured a then-relatively-unknown Jane Lynch. Evidently, she had started to make it big-time, and wanted out of the commercial. I was asked to replace her face in the spot with someone else who had yet to make it big-time, someone like say, myself.

One thing that makes me confident in the quailty of my motor oil is seeing some computer generated horses stampeding through the desert alongside my car. And thank goodness the horses are made out of oil themselves. And also thank goodness there's no traffic to ruin my CG horse stampede.

Have you noticed how many commercials feature horses stampeding alongside the commercial subject? I just saw a new one last night from the Dodge truck company, and it amazes me how uninspired the commercial was. Now WETA did a fine job when Arwen  flooded the river to save Frodo from the Nazgul, but even then, it felt a little weird because I've seen so many commercials using this metaphor to death. I think Exxon has featured a commercial where a leopard or cheetah morphs into the car, demonstrating the power the car has when using Exxon quality gasolines, and I'm sure there have been other animal as car metaphors, but if anyone creates another commercial using a horse stampede alongside the car I'm going to leave the planet. Seriously!