I couldn't even make it through that paragraph.
I work with people like that, too, but don't forget to throw in their complete lack of understanding of grammar and syntax - nevermind creativity.
They suck.
They drive me mad.
Let's you and me pick 'em out and knock 'em off one by one by freakin' one.
Sorry. Long night. State of the Union.
?
??
???
If they had any sense they would have added a "call to action" where the consumer could request their quotes be mailed to them in a freakishly large plastic egg. Then the whole campaign would totally make sense.
Except not.
Yes, you have found one of the more spectacular attention-grabbing ads of this long-running campaign. Several companies have been competing in the mortgage space to showcase ever more-outrageous attention-getters, and we've been able to come up with some really great ones such as this ad. If you click on the states it actually takes you to the form and inputs your state, so it is really useful for the user. Mortgage rates are pretty generic, so we need to get people to sit up and take notice. Check us out, the service is very good.
GS
Someone PLEASE tell me that last comment wasn't for real
I think the only way to describe my reaction is this: My body was wracked with laughter. Can you wracked with laughter?
OH MY GOD I worked in advertising for a few years and spat out my Vector cereal I laughed so hard while reading your last paragraph. Don't forget to describe the decor of the creative director's office - plenty of odd pop-art pieces by him and his asshat friends, half finished bottles of booze, and a shitload of "best-of" ad anthologies.
Junior Gorg. what a tool.
Using "concept" as a verb should be illegal.
I won an Addy once for the copy I wrote for a little item called the Long Honker Goose Call. Sad chapter of my young life.
I mean, hey, I though that post was funny, but I didn't "LOL" till I noticed the Ka-KAW!
snooort!
You have just described 12 years of my work life. I miss it not.
"concept"
bwahahah!
dude, i had no idea my ideas were so luminous. sarah b will you come work with me? you can help me concept the next ad campaign, which will feature byzantine monks in pink tutus. wait ... hear me out ...
You see, Sarah, that's what's known in the biz as a dinosaur "moment." Everyone was sitting around in a meeting, and someone said, you know, I think we need a dinosaur moment here. Not the same as the "cashmere moment" we were always told as missing from whatever catalog was in production at the time at a former fashion copywriting job I had, but still, very "compelling," because, really, what could be more compelling to the consumer than a screeching dinosaur bird with a long beak full of razorsharp little teeth?
He also looks sort of stoned and out of it. Although maybe that's just me.
WEIRD. Very weird.
I like how the pterodactyl's got the mortgages under his wings like a fake-watch salesman in a trenchcoat. "Hey, wanna buy a mortgage? I got all the states: Alabama, Nevada, you name it."
hahaha.
you all just proved that the ad worked. i've never seen so many people have such a fit over a BANNER AD. this is exactly why so many people out there click on them.
and p.s. there is a rex. and maybe a triceratops that'll take a big shite on your screen.
I think the ad could only "work" if we'd all clicked on it. Which we did not.
yeah, but a half million other people have.
And, Sarah, you didn't even hit on the best part of the concept:
Pterodactyls + Wings = Takes you under its wing and protect you! Classic capatalist symbolism, eh?
Oh man, I couldn't stop laughing.
Man, that Evan is one suave character. Someday maybe I'll have the presence of mind to make jokes about triceratops pooping on screens. Huhuh. poop. POOPY!!! poop.
Today I saw the same thing, except it was a corn cob, and the states were little bits of corn. Also there was butter sliding down the side. Fucking refreshing!
Stop adding Neville brothers!
HAH! Oh, this made me laugh.
Is Junior Gorg wearing an black turtleneck sweater? The one back in my advertising days always did. "But, it's....July. Isn't your neck hot?"
If anyone ever invites you to a meeting to "concept some new ideas" just go ahead and slam your head in a door.
I think it's obvious this is to draw in the D&D, Lord of the Rings and science geek crowd.
This would be excellent extra credit for my pop culture class.
Speaking of awful ads did you see this one
http://www.i-mockery.com/shorts/mcsex/default.php
Seriously the ad campaign for McD's now...
Your account is nearly dead on, I am sure. But I actually do want to meet the graphic designer behind this ad. I am hoping that it was what you said already and that someone's boss (who is probably either older than the dinosaur featured here or believes that the ferocious beasts never existed because that would somehow throw off what the bible says) insisted that the lowly designer comply.
I've been there. It wasn't this bad, but I've been there.
I'm there it is this bad.
OH. MY. GOODNESS. I had forgotten how much fun it was to read your blog. Viva la dinosaur!
Out of boredom i composed a haiku to describe the ad:
Pterodactyl flys
to compare mortgage rates and
consume baby meat
omg, you guys have to go to
www.asksnoop.com and type in:
http://queserasera.org
it is HILARIOUS
CANDLEBOX!!!!!!!
It gets worse.
There's another version that features a coiled cobra.
Yeah, that's going to make me feel all cozy about becoming their customer, associate themselves with deadly vipers.
"Click on these mines strapped to kittens to see what fantastic rate we have for YOUR state!"
I thought that pig ad was a penis the first time I saw it too. Personally, that disturbs me more than the pterodactyl.
What bothers me is that they don't have any of those ads for Canadian morgage rates.
tears coming down my face. hilarious. ka KAW!
i think the ant eater is the worst.
the correct usage of seven mary three and candlebox in the same post is killing me. in a good way.
You hit that one right on. I see these ads all over the place and have even clicked on them thinking it was a JOKE. Whose idea was that???
It's like the mortgage company here in Dallas that uses a weird man with a digitally altered talking dog in the commercials - you'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about. They take this guy's mouth and paste it on the dog to make it talk. It's like a Thumb movie gone bad. And it DOESN'T make you want to buy a house.
Im guessing it DOES however, make you want to find out how to excorcize demons from housepets.
Ryan, you funny.
Pterodactyl kind
Helps downtrodden find cheap house
Scares us anyway
Sarah B: Is advertising all creative like that? I thought they did detailed studies to find out how we respond to any image and then control our minds, etc. I didn't realize it was so haphazard in this modern age where they can manipulate us so easily. And I imagine Darren Stevens. Maybe Endora thought this ad campaign up.
Uh...I keep clicking the button for my state and it doesn't work.
I think you've got the wrong end of the stick with your interpretation of this ad.
I think it's clearly one of those 'This is Bob, one of our reliable mortgage refinancers. He's got a wife, three kids and a station wagon, just like you! Refinance with us now. Squander years of scrimping to make the payments! Look. Bob's smiling at you! He wants to be your friend!' type adverts.
So what we've got here is simply a targetted piece of advertising aimed at the flying lizard community.
I for one will only buy a house with those people if I can deal with good old reliable ScreeeeACKACKAKCKACKAKCACK here, every step of the way.
Have you seen the animated one with the gingerbread man who is either stuck in a test-tube of frosting or, as it seems, fucking it? I was going to save that one to post but I couldn't get the animation to transfer which in retrospect is good because OH MY GOD.
Also, killer callback, Greg.
The big "what the fuck" stick bludgeoned me squarely, and your point of view is hilariously accurate. However, that awful winged (say wing-ged, not wing'd - it's so much cooler) prehistoric cash register is a pteranadon, not a pterodactyl. You can tell by the big pointy deal on the back of his horrifying mortgage-rate-filled skull.
I had to learn the difference in the third grade. After that, I am failry certain I stopped learning. This is the first time I have ever had occasion to recall the difference between pteranadons and pterodactyls, and goddamn if it isn't as useless an opportunity as I thought it would be when I was memorizing this shit at 8 years old.
Thanks for making making my public eduction worth about twice as much as I had previously credited it.
i thought the same thing about the gross gingerbread man. and that thing he's in might even be a condom, which is completely full, and with that i vow never to buy a house or reduce my rates or whatever.
I was just coming here to say "has anyone seen the one with the gingerbread man in the condom?" Heh.
Ahd, what the fuck is up with this company?
The worst one I've witnessed had a kid in a wheelchair. Your cursor turned into a crosshair as you moused over the ad. You were supposed to shoot the kid in the wheelchair to "win a prize" or something. I was appalled. This was on dictionary.com. I sent them a scathing email. I'm sure some intern got three words into the email before sending it into email limbo. Of course I never got a response.
oh man. back up off seven mary three, dude! face bustin'.
but the ka-KAW? that was my favorite part, too.
The thing that most of y'all don't realize is that most of these ads are brought to you by different companies. The aforementioned gingerbread man creaming his jeans is from Lower My Bills, which, apparently, doesn't mind you lowering your pants, either. Same with the phallic pig and the corn cob dripping lustfully with butter. So is that mindfuck of a horror show cobra ad - that one personally scare the bejeezus out of me (there's another version of a much tamer blue rattlesnake, which just scares the crap out of me). NexTag is responsible, of course, for offering great mortgage rates on all prehistoric shelters, caves, and tree forts. There's also a T-Rex ad floating around out there, along with psychotic jack-in-the-boxes, creepy crawly spiders, Mexican jumping beans, and ads loosely based on everything from Scrabble to Wheel of Fortune for that demographic that spends 3/4 of their life in front of the boob tube.
How do I possibly know all of this? I'm "on the inside"...shhh...and, believe it or not, ads like the pteranadon - thanks for the clarification - and the spiders are doing gangbusters. Why, oh why you ask? Because most people won't even look at the vanilla-flavored ads of your Bank of Americas and Wells Fargos.
I just saw one of those mortgage ads too. This one featured an unenthused pig, stretched out weiner-dog style, so his body could hold all the text.
I have not yet read all the comments but here goes anyhow:
Girl, you had me laughing hard in a public library! I almost get myself kicked out of the place! You rock! Having done my share of advertising/dealing with the sons and daughters of advertising I can only say hats off to your scenario with the creative director (like your own creative director). IT'S SO TRUE!!! I bet he even wanted to add a loud dinosaur-like sound to let you know it was your lucky day if you got the banner.
Thank you for all the great posts.
OK. Now I've read them all.
...
I had to step outside to laugh. Seriously, people, the amazing things you all say!
Do you think we could contact the agency that did the add and ask them just how much their client's sales have actually increased after they put on the banner? Naw... Maybe that's be a little bit too much.
And Amy, on the add with the guy's mouth pasted on the dog, did you ever see that Absolutely Fabulous episode, Parralox, with the Katy Grin TV comercial for Carpet Madness? No? You just HAVE TO. It's my single favorite AbFab moment:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/abfab/clips/series4/index.shtml
Then click on Katy Grin's carpets.
Someone needs to do some fucking research and find out the truth behind this ad's creation.
Most people usually don't think about it, but there are actually people out there who do create these things. Personally, I couldn't live with myself knowing that my GIF caused so much hate, negativity, and index finger strain in the world, but to each there own.
Please check out some information dedicated to mortgage mortgage http://mortgage.plenty-cash.com/ http://mortgage.plenty-cash.com/ cash advance cash advance http://cash-advance.plenty-cash.com/ http://cash-advance.plenty-cash.com/ loans loans http://www.plenty-cash.com/ http://www.plenty-cash.com/ payday loans payday loans http://payday-loans.plenty-cash.com/ http://payday-loans.plenty-cash.com/ bad credit loans bad credit loans http://bad-credit-loans.plenty-cash.com/ http://bad-credit-loans.plenty-cash.com/ credit card application credit card application http://credit-card-application.plenty-cash.com/ http://credit-card-application.plenty-cash.com/ discover card discover card http://discover-card.plenty-cash.com/ http://discover-card.plenty-cash.com/ home loans home loans http://home-loans.plenty-cash.com/ http://home-loans.plenty-cash.com/ mortgage rates mortgage rates http://mortgage-rates.plenty-cash.com/ http://mortgage-rates.plenty-cash.com/ personal loans personal loans http://personal-loans.plenty-cash.com/ http://personal-loans.plenty-cash.com/ .
I don't have a mortgage, but that ad makes me afraid to check for lower rates, and makes me strangely afraid not to go ahead and check the rates, especially when I have no intention of obtaining a mortgage. I think that pterodactyl would eat this mortgage-tease for lunch. So, babble babble babble, I vote to steer clear of banner ad mortgages regardless of mascot.