One of the things that bugs me about working in advertising is that everyone thinks that they are really easy to do and always wants to comment on them, pitch me ideas and otherwise give me advice and consent on what I do.
I don’t comment on Ginsberg’s opinion in US v Virginia to my lawyer friends. I don’t give investment advice to my financier friends (though maybe I should have to my previously-at-Bear-Stearns buddy). And I certainly don’t write pithy emails making fun of famous surgeons and how they perform surgery to my doctor friend based on having seen a few episodes of ER.
I don’t do this because I don’t know what the shit I am talking about.
Which is true about people who don’t know commenting on advertising…usually.
An attorney friend of mine – who will likely get an informed brief from me on US v Virginia just to show him up – emailed me a rant today about an ad he saw while watching the Yankees last night at his swanky bachelor pad in southern Connecticut. And it was pretty funny. So I am going to post it in full:
I couldn’t find the clip online (which is surprising, because the commercial airs literally every two seconds on ALL local broadcasts of anything), but there is a bizarre new Optimum Online TV spot that just has a relatively handsome dude standing in a totally blank backdrop talking about how awesome Optimum is.
There is a campaign that features the handsome dude and within that campaign a spot that is specifically for their internet service and is directed at Connecticut customers.
The handsome dude promises that Optimum Online is “5 times faster than that phone internet service.” That’s fine. It is pretty much common knowledge that telephones give you Lupus, so it’s not surprising that they would screw up your Google searching too. Stupid phones. But here’s where the new ad takes a new turn, a turn that I can’t decide whether it makes Optimum awesome or just a huge dick.
The handsome dude finishes his fictional-statistics schpiel and then snarkily jabs (paraphrasing), “Obviously Connecticut knows that one place where going faster is better is on the internet. What state wouldn’t want that…….? North Dakota, probably. Pshaww…”
Sooooo true. People in Connecticut LOVE mocking other states. They get off on that shit. In fact, every household in Greenwich just bought a separate internet connection for every room in the house to remind themselves how much they rule and how much people in North Dakota suck.
Optimum might have erred in their hubris, though.
I doubt they accounted for the business they would lose in SOUTH Dakota as well as the mocked and scorned North, because people in South Dakota are stupid and might not realize that only North Dakota was being singled out as being stupid, which they clearly are (I mean, did you hear that those people don’t even like to go fast on the internet?? They have problems).
So, in favor of Optimum being awesome: they like to rip on states other than Connecticut, thus breaking through and connecting with the target. And, the ad clearly prompted everyone in Greenwich to buy multiple internet connections, thus driving sales
In favor of Optimum being dicks: North and South Dakota
I report, you decide.
