Those Penny-pinching Admen

I've noticed a new trend in television commercials. Take the Cadillac commercials. Initially they featured Kate Walsh and the awesome guitar part from Hum's classic song 'Stars'.
Now they feature Lance Reddick from the Wire and that one really awesome episode of the X-Files--and a clip with the same effect, the same atmosphere and general Hummishness, but a sound-alike clip nonetheless, that likely costs Cadillac none of the royalties they had to pay for the HUm clip.
Likewise a Walmart commercial features an instrumental from Badly Drawn Boy's great About A Boy soundtrack, and later broadcasts of the commercial run with a sound-alike, with the same twinkling glockenspiel as the original without any of the residuals to Badly Drawn Boy.
Way to thrift it up, Madison Avenue!

Don't think of it as a commercial

Think of it as a piece of beautiful animation. Then drink some Smirnoff.

Ambient ephemera from America for all you guys in Korea

If you're anything like me, you often wondered what kind of junk you're missing by choosing to live in America. To give you an idea of the kind of inane cultural junk that you'd be passively ingesting if you were sitting on your couch in America, here's a commercial for HeadOn.

What is HeadOn? Whatever you imagine it to be. Available at Walgreens.

Plaque bugs?

The Oral-B Vitality protects against them, according to their commercial.

Plaque bugs?

Twice in one week

It isn;'t often that I'm reminded of the same Mr. Show sketch in one week (not true), but take a look at this Bud Light commercial

and then take a look at my previous post.

From Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse . . .

I just saw an ad for "For Your Consideration" recently come out on video and it said "From Christopher Guest, the director of Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, and A Mighty Wind . . .". Is there any chance that someone would know any of those three movies and not know who Christopher Guest is? As bizarre as it seems, that's exactly like saying "From David Berman, lead singer of the Silver Jews . . ." and "From Steven Spielberg, the director of Jaws . . ." because in all three cases, the number of people who know the thing is almost exactly the same as the number of people that know the person. This form of ad copy was obviously invented for people whose work is more famous than them, for example "From Joe Johnston, director of Jumanji . . ." at which point my father would fall out of his seat in awe of the man who made Robin Williams bearable through rhino attacks. It's simply being applied as wrongly as possible here. Some other people for whom this would not work, considering their fame is exactly the same as that of their work: Jenny Lewis, Shakespeare, Tom Cruise, Lewis Black, Mike Myers, Lars Ulrich, Flea, David Cross, me.