Thursday, May 12, 2011

Nothing Fresh about this commercial



There's a whole series of these Subway "Get Your Own" commercials, which essentially celebrate the three great hallmarks of modern advertising:

1. Men and Women really never have relationships that are not cruel, manipulative, shallow, or just plain hurtful. In pretty much every advertisement featuring interactions between males and females, someone is going to get cheated, harassed, made fun of, ignored, taunted, kicked to the gutter, Un-Friended, abused. And it's supposed to be funny. And to the glue-sniffing children who populate the YouTube comment boards, it always is.

2. The product being sold looks absolutely amazing. The cars are always showroom-shiny, the milkshakes are always overflowing, and the sandwiches are stuffed with enough meat and cheese to feed Somalia for a week. I don't eat garbage like this so I don't really know for sure, but I'd be willing to put down money that this "melt" thing isn't REALLY two feet long and doesn't REALLY weigh 12 pounds, like it does in this commercial.

3. Sharing is, quite simply, Un-American and Just Plain Wrong. From Twix Bars ("Two for Me, None for You") to Doritos ("Get your Own Bag") to this current "Get Your Own" nastiness, the advertisers would like you to remind you that you do Capitalism no favors by sharing your plenty with those around you. The woman in this commercial doesn't ask for a piece of the guy's Mega-Sandwich. She wants the whole. Damn. Thing. Why? See Point #2- this sandwich looks big enough to chop into sections and serve to the whole damn office. She's really going to absorb a week's supply of carbs all by herself?

Ugh, whatever, Subway. Even if your overstuffed packages of meat product and white bread gave me an appetite, the mean-spirited message would take it away. All that being said, the girl in this ad probably did the guy a favor by manipulating him out of his sandwich. He doesn't look like he's in need of excess calories to me.

2 comments:

  1. It amazes me that ads like this don't make more people simply slice up a steak bun, slap some cold cuts, lettuce and salad dressing on it and save themselves from the aggravation of eating at a restaurant that thinks so little of them.

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  2. I despise that Subway ad for a couple of reasons.

    One is that in the original vrsion, the woman said "Great! Give me your melt."

    In the newer one, she says "Give me your sub", but the camera shot cuts away from her before she says it, making the dubbed over voice that much more noticeable -- like the guy in the awning commercial who always makes me think of "Mister Black" on the Kamp Krusty episode of The Simpsons.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBaMfUiTq-E

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamp_Krusty

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