Rare Marketing

2 min read

Your massively undercooked take on the world of advertising.

The day the denim died.

Here’s how I interpret this incredibly bizarre Jordache Jeans commercial from 1987: Two unruly teens poison an old man with a deadly biscuit, feed some birds and play on a carousel while the slow-acting toxin takes effect, then toy with him on a skateboard as his motor skills fail and his body succumbs. Then he dies, ascends into heaven, and practices the Sicilian Defense with a denim angel. When did David Lynch start writing Jordache commercials?

I’d like to buy a vowel.

I always thought Colonel Sanders was a Southern gentleman, so naturally I was taken aback by the crassness of this recent print ad. Then again, KFC ran out of chicken. If that doesn’t warrant a little bit of implied profanity, I’m not sure what does.

A beautiful monstrosity.

This Monster.com ad from 1999 not only gets its point across in a clever (albeit not-so-subtle) way, it established Monster as the go-to job-hunting website—a position the company still enjoys nearly two decades later. Now that these kids are grown up and probably work at soul-sucking, white-collar jobs, I hope the irony isn’t too thick for their middle-managed minds to handle. After all, we can’t all be water slide testers.

Does not compute.

Almost everything about this Apple ad is pretentious. But the worst part is the snarky, preteen girl named Scout (how perfect) making a crack about what constitutes a computer. If my child sassed me like that, I’d pitch the iPad and find her one of those Apple II desktops with the all-green screen. She won’t be able to draw on the monitor or read her fancy graphic novel anymore, but at least she can play Oregon Trail.

Breakfast on the clock.

Despite the fact that eating McDonald’s breakfast is the surest way to make you feel terrible all day, people are still shoving McGriddles down their gullets at a startling pace. Maybe it’s because of some wickedly smart advertising like this sundial breakfast billboard from 2006. Now that McDonald’s breakfast is available all day, the billboard is irrelevant—but the good news is that you can ravage Ronald’s hot cakes 24/7.