Sound Off or Shut Up?

One, two, three, four… awkward commercials aim to score.

Sound familiar? Well if you’ve been anywhere within earshot of a TV in the past year, you’re bound to have gotten a taste of two new food campaigns that sound and look strangely similar.

Hillshire Farms was the first to come up with these ridiculous spots of people marching and chanting for the joy of, um… meat. Strange? Yes. Catchy? Hell yeah. And they’ve done a good job of getting some brand recognition for a food commodity that has been lacking a true leader since that dumb Oscar Meyer wiener (hehe) song first got 4th graders giggling back in 1965.

So, there’s that. Then, Burger King awkwardly crash lands on the scene in a lame attempt to steal back some of the fast food breakfast market using similarly toned spots that are equally as strange and equally as catchy.

So who wins the ‘WTF?’ sound off battle? Well, Hillshire has pretty sweet mustaches involved and the BK version has a fine blonde spraying herself with water… so it’s too close for us to call. So how ’bout you sound off?

 

Man, it’s Tough Being the King

Weird is the new black. At least in terms of advertising… or at least in terms of fast food advertising. Remember the crowds of lemming-like red-headed ‘Wendys‘ running through the fields? Pretty weird. Or Checker’s gangsta feline, Rap Cat? Hilarious, true… but weird. And of course, the literal and figurative king of them all, Burger King’s bulbous-headed, mono-expression-wearing monarch, ‘The King’. Weird beyond belief.

So what? Apparently the new trend in fast food advertising is head-scratchingly amusing creative. That’s funny right? Well apparently some people aren’t laughing.

The King’s latest spot, in which he’s accused of being a lunatic because of his ‘crazy low’ deals on flame-broiled burgers, has mental health organizations up in arms.

“I was stunned. Absolutely stunned and appalled,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We understand edgy, but this is beyond edgy. Way beyond.”

Okee, we know that advertisers have to be sensitive to unfortunate conditions (thank god they didn’t claim he had athlete’s foot). But to be fair, the King isn’t exactly drooling from the mouth and babbling like an idiot. If you ask me, this is just another Lohan-like outburst at a funny commercial for the sake of hyper-sensitivity. I mean, look at the Wendy’s commercials. It’s not like red heads around the world are protesting…

Oh, wait.