The Maddening

There was an ad for I, Robot that, mercifully, hasn’t been shown in this market for a couple of days. The voice-over said, ominously, “We designed them to be trusted with our children, our families, and our homes, but did we design them to be trusted?”

The annoying sound you hear is the venting of my eternal frustration at copywriters that are that dumb. And that entry is my vote for the second dumbest thing ever written for an advertisement.

The first, and I hope you don’t ever see this commercial, is for a company called Vital Basics, which is a stupid miracle vitamin that boosts your metabolism, keeps you alert and awake, and cures dropsy. These guys are so confident you’ll love their product that they are giving it away for free. And so says an unscripted man-on-the-street testimonial from a woman with the shrillest voice imaginable. She shrieks, “They’re giving it away FREE? It must be good.” When she cackles the word “free” it sours milk and causes grown men to weep. It breaks teevee tubes and my glasses. It keeps me up at night with cold shivers. But besides all that: What type of logic is that? Surely I could ask, “They charge thousands of dollars for that? It must be good.” Or even, “They charge $5.95 for shipping and handling? That must be how they make their money.”

Posted by Jonathan at 01:27 AM, 17 June 2004 | Comments (4)