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Vote for . . . The Worst Commercial

When I see a particularly offensive or misleading commerical (I know, I know, they’re all misleading), I get right on the Internet to contact the company and tell them how I feel.

You laugh, but that Windex commercial where the magpies play a prank on a man to get him to walk into a sliding glass door (hey, watch this, says one bird to the other) started as magpies flying into said door and getting injured. Don’t think I didn’t submit a comment about that.

Perdue had a commercial last year with Mr. Perdue saying he’s obsessed with chickens and everything around him has a picture of a chicken on it, down to the duvet on his comforter at night. Now, I do not recommend writing letters that are hostile or foul-mouthed or intimidating. Be that as it may, I couldn’t resist something along the lines of: If you’re going to surround yourself with your chickens, where are the cages? Why do they all have intact beaks? How come they can turn around? If I go to a Perdue facility, what do the chickens really look like? Do you go to bed at night with that image in your mind?

Like I said, I don’t recommend that tack.

But guess what? Evidently, enough people felt offended (or enough surveys showed it was ineffective), and the commercial was off the air within weeks. Now he’s saying he’s obsessed with health, and there’s not a chicken anywhere in the commercial.

Net message? One thing’s for sure: People don’t want to be reminded about where their food comes from. And as I always say: If you don’t want to know how your food was made, you shouldn’t be eating it!

This brings me to a vote y’all can cast right now. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which I support, is holding an election for The Commercial with the Worst Health Message. Go to www.pcrm.org and click on Vote Now!

I had only seen the Hummer commercial with the guy buying tofu and restoring his manhood by purchasing the colossal gas-guzzler. And, of course, I immediately wrote a letter. Thank heavens I hadn’t seen the Kentucky Fried Cruelty commercial with the monk who calls a burger a "masterpiece." That letter wouldn’t have been pretty.

We might not be able to influence presidential elections by casting our votes (as we know here in Florida), but we definitely can get corporate America to spend lots of money pulling commercials and remaking them.

2 Comments Post a comment
  1. Anonymous #

    Wow I had only seen the Burger King commercial before. Those other ones must only be seen in the States I guess. After watching them all its really hard to pick which one is the worst. The Burger King one gets a large crowd backing them up and you know how most people just love to go with the flow so it might actually be the most convincing to meat eaters but to vegans it probably looks like the most ridiculous thing they have ever seen. I know I thing so.

    The TGIF well it's pretty bad too especially at the end when that elderly lady starts acting like some caveman too. The hummer well it manages to offend both environmentalists and vegans ( I know they should go hand in hand but you would be surprise how many so called strong environmentalists are not vegans).

    I would say if I had to choose I would say the Burger King one seemed to bug me the most.

    There are 2 other commercials that upset me too. Their message does not share the same theme ….you must eat meat to be considered a man though but they are equally disturbing.

    One is in a steak house and on the wall is a moose head and a dear head but of course in TV land they are alive and they look down at the people eating their meat meals and the two animal heads start talking to each other about how great the rib dinners look or something like that.

    The other one is a father and daughter go into a pet store and order what animals they would like for dinner. The people in the store all stop talking and look at them in shock. The next scene is them sitting at a table, in a steak house, giving the waitress their meat/meal order. The message being now your in the right people to order meat

    January 21, 2007
  2. Anonymous #

    Opps forgot to put my name with my comment. I'm sure by now with my bad grammer and spelling mistakes you can always tell when something is written by me anyway….lol.

    Laura Lee
    http://www.myspace.com/lauralee42

    January 21, 2007

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