Hey DirecTV – Hope You’re Taking Notes
Just as there are classy and classless ways to refer to a person’s passing (i.e. “kicked the bucket” vs. “dearly departed”), there are classy vs. classless ways to use the deceased’s images in your advertising.
Directv decision makers, grab your pens and start writing, cause you obviously have a lot to learn.
Have you seen the new Sirius XM Radio spot? The deceased Elvis Presley and Richard Pryor appear alongside Michael Jordan and Howard Stern in the commercial. Looks like a recipe for disaster, right? So wrong.
The spot is clear in its inention to praise all of the above men for their contributions in their work – each being a game-changer in their area of entertainment.
When you do it right, the fans take notice in a good way. Not the shitstorm you’re in the asshole of over there at Directv.
Bravo, Sirius. Shame, DirecTV.
DirecTV Needs a Ghost Hand Bitch Slap
One of my favorite movies of all time is Poltergeist. Nothing scares the shit out of me more than children and ghosts/demons – it’s the perfect combination for a scary movie (see The Shining, The Omen, The Exorcist, etc). Apparently its also the perfect combo to hawk TV service. I don’t know how I missed it, but in addition to the Farley faux pas, directv has also used a scene from Poltergeist in one of their ads featuring Craig T. Nelson (we’ll call him Coach) and the creepy little blonde girl. And guess what? The little girl is dead. Died at the ripe old age of 13. Which means, in Directv’s world, she’s ripe for the picking!
Now is it just me, or is using a child (who died as a child) an a-hole move? I almost wish that hand thing that comes out of the TV in the clip would fly out of my TV and over to directv’s headquarters to give everyone who worked on this ad a hefty bitch slap. And as much as I love Coach, he needs a bitch slap too. Bitch slaps all around from the ghost hand.
Dead on Directv 