Ask Manny

One ad that doesn't suck is the plug my friend Manny gave Ad hominem. Thanks Manny.

To hear opinion and commentary from a fellow whose achievements range from being an Amazon.com Top 100 reviewer to having once managed a Venezuelan diaper factory, all having scored a Master's from Cornell, check out his blog, Ask Manny.

Pepto Bismol

Now, where I'm from, we don't really talk about it when we have intestinal discomfort. It's just something that happens, the stomach is declared unfit, and much time is spent in the bathroom.

I think this sort of tact is pretty American. We love to talk about our sexual parts but we keep pretty quiet about our less palatable components.

I think that toilet paper ads are particularly bad in terms of breaching this tactfulness. An ad for one paper brand mentions that less of their product leaves you feeling cleaner. I'm a visual person and that's an image that really doesn't sell.

You can imagine, then, my distaste at the latest Pepto Bismol ads featuring a conga line of intestinally-discomforted office employees. It's kind of catchy, really: An Englishman is singing off a list of stomach maladies for which Pepto is soothing. With each symptom, the office workers grab the offending part of their anatomy (chest for indigestion, tummy for upset stomach, etc).

Then the jingle gets to diarrhea.

And everyone grabs his or her ass.

This is when the ad leaves the realm of cute and clever and enters the world of nasty.

I don't want to know about someone else's diarrhea and neither do you. I'm not being overly sensitive here. I've spoken to a handful of people about this ad and all agree:

Nasty.

Intel Centrino

One thing that really, really galls me is a recent ad for Intel's Centrino processor, which is used in laptops and whored around for its integrated wifi compatibility.

Fair enough.

In the ad, you have a couple strapping a webcam to their laptop in the middle of some Greek ruins. The voiceover declares that with Centrino's wireless capabilities, a Greek amphitheater, which lacks any electrical or network hookups, is the perfect place to put on a show. Wirelessly.

This is incredibly disingenuous, since it conveys the idea that no matter where on earth you are, your centrino laptop will be capable of connecting to the Internet. Moreover, despite the dramatic proliferation of wifi hotspots, the amphitheater depicted looked sufficiently removed from society that the likelihood of wireless connectivity in the area was next to nonexistent.

Intel ads suck.

The only company to do wifi-enabled laptop ads right is IBM. I defy any of you to find a single crappy IBM ad.