The same ad we’ve seen for 20 years
Folgers doesn’t want to mess with what sells lots of coffee around Christmas. In the ’80s iteration, a college kid comes home on Christmas morn. Twenty years later, the same type of kid surprises his little sister by coming home from Africa. So Christmas is hipper and more global, but still selling the same crappy instant coffee.
The Jar Jar Binks of commercials
As a cross between Kate Gosselin’s evil twin and an OCD Wilma Flintstone, the scarily-excited-for-Christmas lady in the Target ads walks that line between quirky enough to be funny and close enough to reality to be creepy. We can’t wait until she gets shelved for another 11 months.
Caroling about shopping
Last year, it was Best Buy with their theater-geek employees singing re-worked lyrics about tech support. This year, Marshalls, T.J.Maxx and HomeGoods feature carolers taunting shoppers about how bad it is to shop in a mall. Why take some of the most overplayed Christmas songs and make them even more irritating?
‘Rudolph’ rip-offs
Listen, Best Buy, no one asked you to mess with a classic — to taunt everyone, everywhere, by fooling them into thinking that their favorite Christmas special was on before you start hocking flat-screens and cheap Dell computers. Stop pulling a bait and switch.
