That Commercial Where A Nissan Frontier Snowboards

In October, I wrote a post about a certain Nissan Frontier ad. You know, the one where it helps land a plane. It became one of my top-viewed entries, and I still see people searching whether or not it’s real. Which is funny, because it so obviously is fake. Here’s another Nissan Frontier commercial…and this time, it’s snowboarding. Why? Just because. Oh, and this one isn’t real either.

BlackBerry Bold’s Beautiful Bikes

So pretty. The image of the colorful bikes travelling through the city at night is just very striking and pleasant. The music sounds great too. Also BlackBerry and its parent company Research in Motion are having severe financial problems, so enjoy commercials like this while you can.

Budweiser, The NBA, LMFAO, And A Mysteriously Missing 7

The NBA is finally back. This Budweiser commercial featuring LMFAO has been shown numerous times today. It parodies the video for their current hit “Sexy and I Know It”. Honestly, I don’t have that much interesting to say about this ad. But my friends did bring up an important question: WHERE IS 7?

The 2011 Joshys: Part III

Parts I and II

The Joshy Grammy Award: Best music in a commercial. These were good ads to start with, but the music took them over the top.

Winner: Buick LaCrosse’s “Garage” featuring “Stars” by Girls Love Shoes

Dashboard looks very nice, voiceover is smooth and informative, and the commercial is stylish all around. But man, the song bumps. “Stars” has been near the top of my Spotify most-played list for a few months now.

Honorable mention: Captain Morgan’s “Ride Home” featuring “The Passenger” by Iggy Pop

Festive, fun, and catchy are a good combination…especially for a summer commercial.

The WTF? Award: The commercials that I watched numerous times to figure out what just happened.

Winner: Old Spice’s Fabio campaign

Bizarre, and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Apparently Old Spice then had a battle between Fabio and The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, but by that point I stopped paying attention.

Honorable mention: Walmart’s “Yodeling Cat”

The “Yodeling Cat” is creepy and weird. The original is only on YouTube, but clips of it have been used for a current Walmart TV commercial.

The Wild Cards: These commercials didn’t really fit into any of my categories, but they still deserve recognition.

State Farm’s “Empire State of Mind”

Directed by Spike Lee, this would be a strong contender for commercial of the year. Stirring, powerful, and both solemn and triumphant.

Nissan Frontier’s “Landing Gear” and Hyundai Elantra’s “Fog and Smog”

I thought these were both stupid ads, but they were this year’s #1 and #2 posts on my blog, in terms of views and comments.

Well, that’s the conclusion of The 2011 Joshys. Hope you enjoyed it! I’m going to be heading to New York City through New Year’s, so I’ll try to update occasionally, but it won’t be as often.

Hershey’s And “I Melt With You”

These Hershey’s commercials have been around for a number of years in various versions, with “Swing/Drive” being the most prominent. I love them…they make me smile every time. And here’s one I just saw. The song, of course, is a remix of the classic “I Melt With You” by Modern English.

My North Korean Dream

This is a post I’ve been mulling over for a while. The death of Kim Jong-il seems like the ideal time to write it.

In late August/early September, I installed the Feedjit tracker on my blog. I knew from WordPress statistics how many views Commercial Society was getting, but I had no idea where they were coming from. The tracker gives real-time updates for when people visit my site, including what post they view and their geographic location. Knowing where visitors are coming from has proven to be the most interesting part. It is absolutely fascinating to look at the globalization of advertising. Just as an example off the top of my head, there was a 20 minute span where people viewed the same post from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany, and Iowa. Whenever the same post is seen a lot in a short period of time, it’s a good indication that the commercial I wrote about has just been shown on a highly-rated program, often football. To date, my blog has seen seen in over 110 countries, spanning 6 continents (still waiting on Antarctica).

Not surprisingly, one of the countries where my blog has not been visited is North Korea. I recently saw a show on the National Geographic Channel about life in North Korea. It was one of the most disturbing and unsettling things I’ve ever watched. They talked to “normal people” (though I’m sure they were carefully selected by the government). You could see the confusion and conflict in these peoples’ eyes. They said life in North Korea was great, and constantly praised the “Dear Leader”. But it was hard to tell if these people were truly happy, brainwashed, or completely miserable but forced to speak well of North Korea at gunpoint.

One thing I wondered about was Internet in North Korea. There is Internet, but it is extremely censored. In addition, common people in North Korea are starving, so it’s not like they have access to computers (or even know about them). So Internet is only for the super elite. Which means that it is extremely unlikely, if not impossible for a common person in North Korea to visit this blog.

But now Kim Jong-il is dead. Nobody knows exactly what’s next for North Korea. Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-un is likely to take over…and it will probably be another awful dictatorship. So let’s assume everything stays the same. I have a dream. I have a dream that somehow a lowly North Korean peasant gets access to a computer, and somehow stumbles onto Commercial Society. Enlightened to the awesome worlds of consumerism, commercialism, and capitalism, he/she starts a REVOLUTION to overthrow the shitty North Korean government. OCCUPY PYONGYANG! FREEEEEDOM! You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Even Santa Uses The iPhone 4S With Siri

Has Santa always been in this many commercials, or is it just that I’m paying more attention this year? Anyway, in this nice new iPhone 4S spot, Siri helps out Santa. Your figure looks great Santa, keep on eating the cookies! 3.7 billion appointments…that’s cute.

The McDonald’s McCafe Peppermint Hottie

First, I’d like you tell you about one of my new favorite websites: Who is that hot ad girl?  Now, I strive to tell you about commercial cuties when they come up, but that’s not really the focus of this blog. But it IS the focus of WITHAG. So I’d encourage you to check it out. And here’s one of their recent hotties.

I like her. Like her a lot. Her name is Dena Cali. She’s black, Swedish, and Chinese, and she’s my newest commercial crush.

The 2011 Joshys: Part II

Part I

The Don Draper Award: The coolest of the year. Advertising like this is what makes people want to go into advertising.

Winner: Heineken’s “The Entrance”

Cool visuals, a cool song by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour (not Avril Lavigne…), and just overall full of fun swagger.

Honorable mention: Anything else Heineken.

The Durr Award: The dumbest of the year. A very competitive award. Crap like this makes people hate commercials.

Winner (loser?): The stupid Fiat commercials with Jennifer Lopez.

Gratuitous and lame. The one with the dancing is worse, though J.Lo “driving” though the Bronx was terrible too. Especially since it was a body double in the Bronx.

Dishonorable mention: Miller Lite’s “Man Up” campaign and Coors Light’s bar exam spots.

American megabreweries have a low-brow reputation and commercials like these play right into it. Miller Lite isn’t manly. And I thought it was amusing how the Coors Light bar exam ads were played endlessly in the summer, when real law school grads were fretting over the real bar exam.

The Timothy Leary Award: The trippiest commercials. You might not have been on drugs, but these made you feel like it.

Winner: “Heart’s Desire” from Sonic

Love it. Trippy as all hell, this seems like it could be either a drug-induced fantasy or maybe just a fat person’s fantasy. Influenced by The Big Lebowski. The song is really catchy too.

Honorable mention: The Toyota Prius “People Person” commercial. Weird stuff.

The Field of Dreams Award: Field of Dreams is a movie that is known to make grown men cry. This award goes to those tearjerker commercials that have the same potential.

Winner: Johnson & Johnson’s Hospice Nurses

Either of Johnson & Johnson’s other nursing spots could have won, but the “Hospice Nurses” ad had the most personal impact on me.

Honorable mention: “It’s Time” from Get Up!

One of the best defenses of marriage equality that you’ll ever see.

The Onion Award: Best satirical commercial.

Winner: Toyota Venza’s “Social Network”

A very funny campaign. And it’s nice to see that the Facebook generation can take a joke as well as we can dish them out.

Honorable mention: Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing”. People who camp out for consumer products are morons.

Chevy, Santa, And The Deer (Err…Fish) Hunter

Chevrolet has like 8 billion new commercials featuring Santa Claus as a salesman named Nick (Get it? St Nick…) But here’s the standout one. The funny one where the man says he hunts deer and then realizing he’s talking to Santa, changes his response to fish. Good stuff.