Apropos of nothing political:
We have all seen advertising we consider to be in poor taste. But two companies are currently crossing over the “poor taste” line and have put out what I consider to be truly shameful TV commercials.
-One is a company I never heard of until recently: a discount hotel site called booking.com. Its commercial has a family fearfully waiting to see if the hotel they picked on booking.com has an acceptable room. The door opens, everyone is happy with it, and the voiceover excitedly informs us that “You\’ve got it right! You\’ve got it booking right!”, followed by “It doesn\’t get any booking better than this!” and “Look at the booking view!”.
Congratulations to booking.com for its crude, unclever way of saying “fucking” three times on TV. Your grade school-quality end around must have wowed \’em at the bar down the street from your office. But to most people – at least I hope – it\’s pretty repulsive.
-The other is a company we all know: Verizon FIOS. Verizon\’s idea of pointing out that it has a faster upload speed than other internet providers is to have 7 different people – 6 customers of other providers and a voiceover – tell us their upload speed is “half fast”…with one of them a mother talking in the presence of her apparently tween-aged son. This crude, unclever way of saying “half-assed” is right down there with the booking.com commercial.
Why do they do this? Do they think people who book hotel rooms and use the internet have become so dumbed down that this will be funny to them? That people who aren\’t dumbed down won\’t find it offensive?
Look, I have no problem with offensive language. I\’m certainly no stranger to using it. But there should be at least a minimal amount of discretion as to where and when it is used.
Should garbage like this casually be placed in a TV commercial, which goes out to the general public? I don\’t think so.
Ok, back to politics, where unclever and offensive are even easier to find.
