WTF: Advertising Edition

Friendly Friends, if there is one thing that makes me scratch my jewfro and launch into a grand mal rantin' and ravin' session, it's when Madison Avenue uses an inappropriate song for a commercial.

None of these are new by the by. But they stick in my craw something fierce.

First and foremost is the use of this classic:



To advertise a cruise line. A cruise line.

Let that sink in.

This cruise line shows happy families taking advantage of all of the family amenities these floating petri dishes offer. And playing under the shots of the happy family is Mr. Pop's snarling.

So how do the lyrics:
Here comes Johnny Yen again/with the liquor and drugs/and a flesh machine/he's gonna do another strip tease...

(plus the other ones about having it in his ear before, beating his brains with the aforesaid liquor and drugs and of course the torture film)

sell a family cruise line?

Easy! Apparently in the cruise company commercial Johnny Yen just shows up with a Lust for Life. No mention of hypnotizing chickens or his GTO or any controlled substances. Just Johnny and his Lust for Life.

Second on my list is the thankfully abandoned Wrangler campaign that showed just how red and white and blue Wranglers are. Why they're more American than Mom and apple pie.

Know how I know that?

Because a bunch of idiots playing flag football (or fishing, I can't remember) with this song playing in the background told me so:


So when the lyrics proclaim:
Some folks are born made to wave the flag /ooh, they're red, white and blue./ And when the band plays "Hail To The Chief"/oh, they point the cannon at you, Lord/ It ain't me, it ain't me/I ain't no senator's son/It ain't me, it ain't me/ I ain't no fortunate one, no...

how did Wrangler convince us all that they are uber-American and basically the bomb?

Well by cutting off the words after "Some folks are made to wave the flag/ooh the red white and blue" that's how.

Turns a protest song into a rallying cry for patriotic idiots to buy Wranglers right quick, don't it?

I hate this stuff.

It's bad enough to hear classic songs being used to shill for mega-corporations, but at least they could use a more appropriate song. I guess it's easier to just assume that we're all idiots and that we believe that Iggy Freaking Pop was thinking about taking his family on a cruise when he penned his anthem of hard living in the late 70's. And John Fogerty reeeeaaaalllyyy hoped that his protest of the preferential treatment of the well connected during the Vietnam War would sell dungarees.