Another Year, Another Crop of Bad Ad Fads.

1. Too often lately, one slips through. Some junior copywriter, in a fit of adolescent indulgence, or perhaps just desperation, writes a TV spot in rhyme. Oh, please, please, please, don’t do that. Creative Directors and clients everywhere, should you be confronted with one of these sophomoric, wincingly cute scripts, don’t embarrass yourselves. Do the merciful thing. Kill it. Nip it. Send a clear message: TV spots are no time to rhyme.

2. Just because a film or editing technique/device/trick/gimmick exists does not
require that it be used. And it certainly doesn’t mean that it must be used ad nauseum. Just thought I’d point that out to all you guys out there who, a decade ago, couldn’t resist inserting all those flashbulb bursts at every cut point, and who are now indulging in oh-so-tired practices like the 360 degree Matrix effect, or the even worse, subjecting us to the jumping-from-fast-to-slow-motion-and-back thing, or real-time-to-fast-to-slow-motion-and-back-to-real-time thing, or any variation thereof. Let’s move on, shall we? And the next gimmick you latch onto, try to use it when it makes sense, and not just because it’s cool and distracts us from the spot’s conceptual void.

3. Speaking of which, where is the wave of me too spots using the “live action transformed into animation” technique made popular by Waking Life, that parade of profoundbytes wrapped up in film form, which made the rounds at the end of last year? In case any of you out there are considering succumbing to this temptation, remind yourselves that going this route is an obvious, anyone-would-think-of-it, to speak nothing of gratuitous, gimmick. I mean, I thought of it 15 seconds into the film and I’m not even working on a TV assignment right now. Spare yourself the embarrassment of being counted among the faceless throngs who are, likely, walking into creative directors’ offices at ad agencies across America as we speak, with rough TV concepts in one hand, and a Waking Life DVD in the other, thinking they’re going to wow their bosses with this cool new technique, which they’re hoping will pass for an idea.

4. How many commercials can they make depicting hip young people riding in a car grooving to the sounds of some apparently infectious rock ditty? If I were to hazard a guess, it would be about as many spots as there are print ads for hip clothes which consist solely of pictures of hip, attitudinous people sitting around, standing around, leaning, lying, glowering, laughing, stuff like that. Now there’s an advertising idea.

5. We are experiencing a raft of commercials in which we see people swimming or floating around in various consumables which we are supposed to be drinking or eating. Propel presents us with people swimming in the bottle, like macrobes. Another brand of water has babies swimming around in (and presumably peeing in) its water. A Kraft spot features people diving into a river of salad dressing. Haagen-Dazs has a woman diving into a cold pint of one of its products. I know “appetite appeal” sounds like a dated concept, but, uh...

6. About these people modifying modifiers with hyphenated phrases, i.e. young women driving around eating Yoplait yogurt: “This Yoplait sure is good. Wind-in-my-hair good, hugging-the-curves-good, driving-barefoot good . . .” This painfully contrived device is bad. Stapling-my-thumb-to-the-wall bad, vomit-in-my-shoes bad, Nikki-McKibbons-voice bad . . .