Running With Quills: Elizabeth G. Weighs in on the Iconic Symbols of the 21st Century

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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Elizabeth G. Weighs in on the Iconic Symbols of the 21st Century

I’m one of those folks who automatically hits the mute button on the TV remote as soon as a commercial comes on . . . with a few notable exceptions. I actually enjoy watching these iconic symbols of our time:

The Geico Gecko: They say it isn’t easy being green, but something about this little guy always makes me smile. Maybe it’s his accent. Maybe it’s his sense of humor. (Apparently geckos are a pretty funny lot by nature.) Maybe it’s the mug of steaming hot tea held in his “hand.” Whatever it is, it works for me. I even have a picture of the GG up on the bulletin board in my office. After all, those of us who have gone over to the Dark Side, need a little levity now and then. (FYI: The Geico Gecko was rated as America's favorite advertising icon in 2005.)

The Energizer Bunny: I’m a sucker for bunnies and all things pink. At least I used to be. Now I’ve put them in the same category as Jayne’s alien squirrels. (FYI: In one evening those &!#%$ bunnies destroyed the prize clematis in my backyard; the clematis I’d been nurturing for the past five years without any sign of interest from said alien bunnies.)

Dogs Rule: Who can resist the myriad shapes, sizes and breeds of man’s best friend who show up in this series of commercials? I know I can’t.

Tiger Woods: I’ve been a fan ever since I saw Tiger play at the British Open at St. Andrew’s in 1995. Since then, of course, he’s become the #1 golfer in the world. His commercials always have a wonderful sense of playfulness about them. And Mr. Woods does have the best teeth I’ve ever seen! (Yes, I know they’re caps, but he still has an amazing smile.)

The Viking Horde: At least I think they’re supposed to be Vikings—although they seem to speak with a hybrid East London-Cockney accent. Go figure. Anyway, they make me laugh. Humor seems to be at the root of most of the commercials I enjoy.

The Golden Arches: I don’t actually watch McDonald’s commercials, but I recently read an astonishing study about pre-schoolers and the Big McD. Apparently kids rated everything as tasting better if it was presented with the Golden Arches logo, including carrot sticks and milk. (I’m dumbfounded by this one, folks.)

Inquiring Minds want to know, naturally: Good or bad, what are some of the iconic symbols in today’s advertising world that always capture your attention?

Cheers!
EG

30 Comments:

Ranurgis said...: Hmm, the Golden Arches thing really is a bit strange unless it's a type of placebo effect. If it looks like McDonald's, it must be good, after all, I like going to McDonald's and if I say I don't like this, maybe Mom will say we can't go anymore.

I'm afraid I'm lost on the Geico Gecko. I haven't watched TV for nearly 2 years and if I can't get my telephone/Internet bill down, or earn some money somehow, it'll be a lot longer before I can actually connect my TV and watch some shows.

The Viking Horde is similarly unknown to me. I feel almost as I did in the 1980s when I came back to a whole new world after living in Europe for 10 years. But then, things change even faster now as far as trends and knowledge are concerned. We must be close to doubling them every year now.

Ah, yes. I'm a dog person too. Kitties can be a little too destructive on the whole.

Anything else worthwhile that I'm missing in my TV-lessness besides "24", history and archeology shows, the CFL, and the news?

Could everybody please help me remember Jayne's chat tomorrow? If I know myself, I'll probably remember it at 10:10 p.m. I can't even put out the book to remind me because I haven't seen it yet. Yes, I did go and look for it today.; 9:54 PM
Lori Foster said...: I LOVE commercials! Most of them anyway. Anything with babies and pets are adorable.
The commercials I detest are those stupid shampoo commercials - Herbel Essence I think - where women moan and carry on in elevators and elsewhere because they love the smell of their shampoo so much. Ick.

And the one where the guy takes and enhancement drug and suddenly he has big feet and he makes a bigger splash in the pool and women and men are all oogling him.
That one drives me nuts!

Unfortunately, I'm about fed up with the whole caveman thing too.

Oh, but I loved the one about drugs -it's an oldie but a goodie. This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.
LOL. Great message!

Lori; 5:37 AM
Cbell said...: I agree Lori... the cavemen are over... and the fact that they are going to produce a comic series featuring them? I can honestly say I will not watch one episode.

The commercial that is KILLING me right now? The Viva Viagra commercial. I have nothing against the product... but the fact that a group of men are sitting around and singing its worth... ohmygosh. Make it stop. I blogged about it myself, and I'm telling you, it is killing me!; 5:50 AM
aussie dee said...: my favourites are the PAL dog food ads, the Tim Tams bikkies ad,; 6:02 AM
Anonymous said...: I really like the California cheese cows even while I doubt that anywhere in California looks like their pasture. Another one I'll unmute for is Bush's beans ones where Duke the dog is always trying to sell the secret recipe. I never liked the cavemen but I really despise the new Febreze adds. Eleanor; 6:12 AM
Margaret said...: I like most ads with a gentle humor to them. Tiger Woods, the Energizer Bunny, the Viking Horde (especially the Christmas one) are faves.

I loath the gecko with his really bad imitation of Michael Caine as "Alfie". And the cavemen ceased being amusing afer the first airing. The ads for Progressive auto insurance used to make me reach for the mute or FF. They seem a bit better now.

Any commercial that assumes I'm dumber than a box of rocks makes my muting finger itch. Frankly, I love my DVR so I can whip through those suckers as fast as can be. I make a note of really annoying ones so that I never purchase whatever they are selling.

Male enhancement drug ads are just plain mud-between-the-toes feeling.

LOL You sure opened up a can of worms today, Elizabeth!

Margaret; 7:28 AM
DFender said...: EG,

Lovin' the Gecko... and in the same vein, I love the Aflac duck commercials, in fact I think that Gilbert Godfrey has a hysterically funny voice.

I still laugh every time I see the AT&T/Cingular cell phone commercial when the Mom and daughter are talking in "text"... LOL! Hysterical and oh-so-true to life.

I also love the older Nike commercial with the Streaker in a soccer stadium... LOLOL

I absoutely hate the new commercial for Summer's Eve Body Wash. Iew. C'mon... who wants to smell like something Summer's Eve would make? Blech.

Gotta love some of those SuperBowl ads... some are really good... others, not so much... LOL.

Happy Wednesday!

Deb; 8:14 AM
Anonymous said...: I also love the California Cows commercials. I really enjoy the Toys R Us easter one with all the bunnies singing Here Comes Peter Cottontail. In Canada Telus has some great ads; two years ago they had one featuring the song I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas which most of the country was singing throughout the holiday. As to the commercials I despise I have to say Dairy Queen has had some of the worst ads I've ever seen in the past few years - particularly the very offensive one where they guy sticks his tongue in a mixer.; 8:27 AM
Jayne Ann Krentz said...: Great blog, EG!

I confess I love clever commercials. I see them as an art form -- commercial art, I guess. But, sadly, the ones I love best are usually so good I never notice what they are trying to sell.

Anyone remember the one where the dog is driving the car and the guy in the passenger seat is complaining and they drive into a pond? Loved it but never figured out what it was selling.

--Jayne; 8:35 AM
karende said...: I mostly ignore commercials, except for some of the really clever pet ones. And Kibbles and Bits - a friend’s DH created the original, so I do have a soft spot for that one. The GG is getting old, though there are still a few good ones. No matter what they do, the Hallmark ads always make me cry - wonder what that says about me! Car ads do the same, but for a different reason: it’s the pits knowing I’ll never be able to drive again.

There was a show about 20 years ago that was a compilation of the best commercials world wide, winners of all sorts of awards. My all time favorite was one with Pele and a cow. He was showing off dribbling a soccer ball, and when he finished, the cow did the same thing but with 4 feet and a lot more rhythm, and at the end, he slunk off with the ball and the cow went back to chewing her cud. I have no clue what was being sold. My second favorite was a man sneaking in to surprise his wife with a romantic evening. He got inside, stripped, put a rose between his teeth, and made a grand entrance to the dining room - where he surprised his wife, all right, and her parents who’d come unexpectedly for dinner. The various expressions were absolutely priceless.

karibear; 10:30 AM
Elizabeth Guest said...: Hi everyone,

Your comments are really intriguing. We all seem to remember the commercials we love or the ones we hate. And sometimes we don't even recall what they're advertising.

I don't get as tired of my favorites as most people do because I get to watch so little TV. (It's also the perfect time for a quick run for a diet cola or a bathroom break.:-)

Happy Wednesday!
~EG; 11:49 AM
Anonymous said...: I don't know if everybody gets the Liberty Mutual responsibility commercial. It is a series of vignettes where someone helps somebody on the street, like not stepping off a curb too quick, or getting a stroller off a city bus. In each vignette, someone watches this happen, then they help someone in the next vignette. At the end you see the first one you saw at the beginning.

I enjoy it, and also the music on the first version was good. The new one I see now doesn't have as good a music.

I would also say the VW commercials earlier in the spring and summer where people were desolate, reading depressing poetry or another one where the man held up a sign saying WORLD IS ENDING. Then along comes a twentysomething guy hollering " Three Volkswagons under $17k" and everyone gets happier. The sign guy puts his sign in the trash and poetry reader just stops, then says something like "a new day dawns, HOPE."

Oh, and the Staples ad about 3-4 years ago that was out for back to school, with Dad driving around the store happy as could be with the Christmas carol "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" playing in the background and the children trudging behind like death camp marchers! It was so funny.
These make me smile!
SusanB; 1:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Definitely, the AFLAC duck! Love an animal with attitude!!

Also, I LOL at the vintage Budweiser commercials...the frogs chanting(Bud...Wy...Zer)...the dalmation brothers separated at birth...the animal "streaker". You can see all these at youtube.com and type in Budweiser commercials.

Have a great day!!

Karen
Klamath Falls OR; 2:52 PM
Louis said...: Love the Aflac duck...I laugh at every quack.

Love the "little green guy"....and not because I have Geico insurance.

There will always be "symbols" of some form or another to make us laugh or give inspiration.; 3:11 PM
gina said...: Aflac duck, Budwisor frogs, California cows, and the Geico gecko have all been favorites of mine.

I normally hate the Herbal Essence commercials, but the one where the girl throws the bottle to her friend with the long, brown hair, and it turns out to be a John, not a Jenny, cracks me up.

But I think my all time favorite commercials were from McDonalds...you know the ones: "Nothin' but net."

---gina from texas, first-time poster; 3:52 PM
Elizabeth Guest said...: I can't believe I forgot the Aflac duck commercials. I love the Aflac duck!

I haven't seen the California cows yet.

I agree the cavemen are already so last year! Can't imagine why TPTB think a TV show based on those characters is a good idea.

And a special "Hi" to first-time poster Gina from Texas. Hope it will be the first of many posts. :-)

Happy Wednesday evening all!
~EG; 5:33 PM
Ranurgis said...: My favorite and best-remembered commercial is one that was made years ago. It's just a simple cartoon character who finishes some job and reaches for his cigarettes to relax. However, he can't find any matches so he starts running, getting more and more frantic. Suddenly, a piece of string with fire coming off the end appears and he tries to light his cigarette from the string. "Boom"--everything blows up. He had set a fuse to explosives and ended blowing up himself as well.

It was an anti-smoking commercial from the Canadian government.

This commercial really hit home when I was driving my sister and my cousin to Berlin in the '70s. We were waiting at the border between the GDR and Berlin. Suddenly, my cousin *had* to have a cigarette and she started to look frantically for one. She almost drove my sister and me nuts, especially since you always had to be very well-behaved at the GDR border. Any little thing could get you pulled off the road and into who knows what kind of circumstances. I tried to calm her down with explanations but she wouldn't stop until she finally had her cigarette lit.

It could so easily have become a "Boom!" situation for us because of some stupid cigarette.; 5:58 PM
The Spratt's said...: This post has been removed by the author.; 6:15 PM
karende said...: I saw one tonight I thought was funny. A bunch of guys telling another guy how the guinea pig in a cage was representative of their customers. The other guy said their customers had more freedom. One of the twits said freedom was overrated, and the GP liked her cage. Then he opened it and the GP attacked him. I have absolutely NO idea what they were selling, but the idea of an attack whistle piggle [that’s what my kids used to call ours] is just too funny.

Oh, I also like the one where the cat invites her friend the bloodhound over to help find the litter box. Never did catch what brand it was, though.

karibear; 10:04 PM
Elizabeth Guest said...: This is fascinating. So many of you are mentioning commercials I've never seen. It makes sense to me I wouldn't see the same commercials as aussie dee since I live in the US.

Do you think it's a regional thing based on where we each live? Or is it the TV stations we're watching? Any ideas?

Happy Thursday!
~EG; 7:32 AM
karende said...: Depends on [a] which channels you watch, [b] which networks, [c] whether you have cable or dish or broadband and what the source is. The attack GP was on Oxygen on a Comcast pass-through to a local provider. But in our general area, there's Comcast, DishTV, Verizon, and a bunch of small local cable providers. So what you see depends at least partly on where it comes from. And if you have an antenna for local broadcast without cable, you get still other options. And something like the Superbowl is still more different - those time slots are megabucks and bought and planned for way in advance.

karibear; 9:58 AM
Kay Webb Harrison said...: The attack guinea pig was one of a series of commercials for cell phone service. Chad, the rep for All-tell (?), sells the service that allows customers to link to people on any other company--My Circle (?). The other "guys" represent Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and one other. One of the spots was a courtroom scene; one had the "guys" abduct Chad and threaten him with bodily harm. I have seen these commercials on many different channels. They even have a print add.

Has anyone else noticed the animated bee in the Nasonex commercial? Either his voice is that of Antonio Banderas or of someone who sounds exactly like him.

I like the Ghirardelli(?) chocolate commercial that uses the Flower aria from "Lakme" by Leo Delibes. I love the Dove ProAge hair product commercial with the Spanish guitar music.

Kay; 10:36 AM
Anonymous said...: The voice of the Nasonex bee is in fact Antonio Banderas (read it somewhere).

I also like the Target ads. Not because they are cute or make me laugh, I just think they are clever in promoting Target with a series of products available in clever displays. I particularly like the latest bunch which are set to the song "You Say Goodbye and I say Hello" by the Beatles. But Target changed the spelling and it goes You say good buy and I say Hello, Hello Good Buy, etc.

Kathy H; 12:21 PM
karende said...: Ahh, cell phones! It was probably a mental block, then. I had a singularly bad experience with Cingular and now I stick to the prepaid Tracfone. They're marginally better, and I do at times need one. Amazing, isn't it, how once a technology is developed it suddenly becomes a necessary evil. Like computers.

karibear

PS: One of my favorite [not] commercials is one of the beers. It takes place supposedly in southeast Alaska, where the men are catching dungeness crab, and when they dump the crab pot, they all drink up and say 'Life doesn't get any better than this!' That's the first time I've ever seen cooked crab dumped out of a pot like that. I suppose it was safer for the actors, at least - dungies are aggressive little buggers. Every fisherman I know who watched that nearly ruptured themselves laughing over it.; 12:51 PM
Jayne Ann Krentz said...: Just testing to see if I can get this posted. Sorry for the interruption!

--Jayne; 1:10 PM
susan andersen said...: Suzanne, I'm with you--I generally mute when commercials come on.

But of the ones I have seen recently I really, really dislike ALL the Geico ads. Cannot stand the gecko and find the cavemen to be one trick ponies. Love the California cows and the new shampoo commercial (though don't know the name of the shampoo) with the two hair models trying to outwhip their hair until one throws her neck out. Even knowing it's coming I laugh every time.

Fun blog!; 1:54 PM
Anonymous said...: I had to leave another comment...last night I saw a commercial with Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry all dressed in black...for Gillette razors.

It must have been written by a woman, because they all start by coming out of a cloud or dry ice. Seriously HOT. Then at the end, Federer pretend punches Tiger, and Tiger stops looking tough to look puzzled.

Thierry Henry is a SOCCER/Futbol star. Yummy.!!!; 7:26 AM
Tina F said...: I liked the gecko before he started talking.

The old Hamm's Beer commercials were good.

Usually during commercials is when I read or look for food or change the channel.; 7:17 PM
Jenllewis said...: I find that I don't understand most of todays commercials. You don't see the product half of the time. The ones I really enjoyed were the coffee commercials a few years ago. Two people meet and seem to be attracted to each other. I think it was Tasters Choice coffee. He would go to her place to borrow coffee and she would look at him like she could eat him up or drink him down! It was an amazing sort of love story. I also remember the Polaroid commercials with James Garner and Mariette Harley. They were so much fun. People actually believed they were married to each other. They don't make commercials like they used too!; 7:17 PM
Elizabeth Guest said...: Jenllewis said: The ones I really enjoyed were the coffee commercials a few years ago.

Me, too! Those commercials were a kind of ongoing mini-romance. I think the actor was later on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," wasn't he?

~EG; 5:17 PM

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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Elizabeth G. Weighs in on the Iconic Symbols of the 21st Century

30 Comments: