Garfield's Ad Review
Goodby Does Impossible, Cures Comcast Affective Disorder
OK, So How Day Do Dat?
Client walks into Goodby Silverstein & Partners, plops down a suitcase full of money. Says, "You have your choice of three briefs." Partners say, "OK, shoot."
"No. 1," the client says. "Find a noninvasive cure for cancer."
Goodby says, "We're an ad agency. That's completely beyond our capabilities."
Client says, "No. 2: Conquer the speed of light."
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Title: Singalong Marketer: Comcast  Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco |
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| "Singalong" consists of an intentionally amateur-looking performer singing an intentionally amateurish-sounding jingle. |
Client says, "Make Comcast seem adorable."
Goodby says, "Can you tell us the cancer one again?"
Sort of an old joke, but the payoff is that they got the Comcast business and have done a pretty good job fulfilling the brief. Comcast! The most infuriating company ever. Spotty service. High-handed pricing and programming decisions. Sneaky throttling of internet bandwidth. And a customer-service infrastructure as devised by Hannibal Lecter.
This is the company whose installers fall asleep on the customers' sofa while waiting on hold ... with Comcast. This is the company that so infuriated sweet, elderly Mona Shaw that she took a claw hammer to their office equipment. This is a company so oafish and negligent that America's kindest and most patient man founded a customer-service-of-last-resort website called Comcastmustdie.com.
So imagine our surprise to view the latest Comcast spot, break into a wide smile and coo, "That is so darling!" (OK, not exactly that. But definitely not "Die. Die. Die!")
The commercial, called "Singalong," consists of an intentionally amateur-looking performer singing an intentionally amateurish-sounding jingle matted against a colorful but intentionally grade-school-musical-quality backdrop. Here are the lyrics -- sung repeating C,D,E,C -- thrumming eight beats at a time:
New sensations sending shivers.And so on, ending in C-O-M-C-A-S-T, which should be a very downer way to end any singalong, but somehow, in this case, simply isn't. How day do dat?
Flying further, dreaming bigger.
Single cable, one decision,
Internet on television.
High-speed internet elation,
Crazy-fast acceleration
Awe-insipring, screaming,
Yelling, ROTFLOLing
Not, strictly speaking, via originality. The fact is, everything in this commercial is borrowed. The primitive compositing harkens back to a James Thurber-esque '60s TV show called "My World and Welcome to It." The over-the-top, animated-chipmunks sweetness is by now familiar trope of post-modernism, announcing "We know this saccharine. It's a joke." The general buoyancy and pastel optimism owes a great debt to "Grrr," the Cannes-winning masterpiece for Honda. And the exact, thrumming mini-scale was done a decade ago by an advertiser neither AdReview nor the 12 people we called could think of, but take our word for it, it's right on the tip of our right hemisphere.
Anyway, who cares? Familiar or not, it all adds up to success. Remember, this isn't a nice, eco-friendly hybrid they're jingling goofily about. It isn't ice cream or circuses or Day-Glo condoms. It's the freakin' cable company, which -- after all the singing is done -- you can't help feeling better about.
Also makes you wonder if we really need to cure cancer. Maybe it just needs a jingle.
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Too bad Comcast doesn't serve our area.
Even one lousy incidence of customer (non)service can't be erased by a thousand brilliant ads.
Or this one.
David Fish | Chicago
As always thank!
Frank Eliason
Jillian Conochan | MS3 Marketing | jconochan@ms3marketing.com
Technology is not the answer to better customer service. You are only speaking about response times, rather than the cultural change that needs to take place at your organization. That will not happen until leadership gets the dollar signs out of their eyes.
Bob,
The commercial is not cute or anything remotely positive at all. It is only a new gift-wrapping over a glorious turd.
Dream big.
series of ads. It is awesome, and stops people in their tracks.
My sons friends, who stop at nothing, were in the living room and that spot came on and there was dead silence. For me that is the
best 'truth in advertising' ever.
I do not know if the 'free credit report.com' spot is from this same intelligent creative group, but I have a five dollar bet on it that it is.
It's about entertaining and you have scored huge on that side!
Great creative, great production,simply great work!
At $148 per month for Comcast (cable only), I felt ripped off. At $210 per month, I felt that I was about to be raped. I immediately cancelled all the premium stuff and now have the monopolistic Comcast's 78-channel "basic package" for about $50+ per month. Imagine, in these parlous times, I have saved my family budget $2,000 a year!
And all because Comcast, in their supreme arrogance and greediness, killed the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. The saved $2,000 per year was pure bottom line profit for Comcast. My Net Flix subscription @ $17 a month will amply satisfy our appetite for movies. Comcast On-Demand be damned.
At a point in time, I thought that Bob Garfield was an insightful, articulate and credible advertising critic. Recently, I cheered his somewhat over-the-top rants against the Comcast evil empire.
But, no longer. Garfield's about-face on Comcast, based upon a trite, sophomoric jingle ad campaign stinks to the high heavens.
It turns out that, like his namesake, Garfield really is a pussy after all.
Mike McDonald, Co-founder, McDonald & Little, Atlanta
as for "stinks to high heavens," i don't know what that means. but if you're suggesting what i think you may be suggesting, them's fightin' words.
"Garfield's about-face on Comcast, based upon a trite, sophomoric jingle ad campaign stinks to the high heavens".
I stand by my all of my observations including the above opinion. If you need further clarification as to what this means, it means exactly what it says: You have trivialized your oft-stated moral outrage at Comcast by clearly suggesting that a lousy ad campaign makes you feel somehow better about a lousy company with lousy business practices.
Since you have raised a stink about this admittedly opinionated phrase, perhaps you'll enlighten your readers and me as to just what you mean by your comment: "but if you're suggesting what i think you may be suggesting, them's fightin' words". – Bob Garfield | Anytown
You have unabashedly skewered the creative efforts of a lot of individuals and companies over your long tenure as a critic.In some cases fairly and in others, not so. In the process, you have done some significant damage to egos and careers. Ad criticism is a blood sport and it cuts both ways.
Mike McDonald
to all those "about face" people, separate the evaluation of an campaign from the evaluation of a company. it does beg the question, why is an ad critic critiquing a company's business operations and then creating a social media campaign against them
if you think i have ever regarded my column as blood sport, you truly dishonor me. it may be true that adreview has taken a toll on egos, and possibly careers. the very thought of it has haunted me from the beginning. that's one reason i don't review individuals; i review ads. i can think of but one time i've mentioned anybody's name in a negative review -- and that happened to be joe pytka, whose work probably has averaged 3.5 stars in adreview over time. (and, by the way, my average rating over 20-some years is about 2.6 stars out of 4, so i'm more often kind that nasty) . furthermore, i've made it my business to keep my distance from the industry. with the except of a cannes pilgrimage every 2 or 3 years, i do not mix with people whose work i cover. you are all strangers to me. neither friends, nor enemies. i don't even follow who works at which agency, a fact that often confounds my management.
concerning comcast, i daresay i've been pretty instrumental in helping them see the customer-service light, and in helping many hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals get their problems attended to by the hitherto unresponsive corporate juggernaut. the culture of that company, as far as i can tell, is beginning to change. does that make me a pussy? if so, i'm one proud pussy.
the subject of my review, though, was advertising's ability to alter audience perception. i merely gave credit where credit is due. whatever i think about comcast, they're not philip-morris. they're not killers, hooking children on addictive carcinogens.
finally, as to your "stinks to high heaven" phrasing, that sure sounds like you're accusing me of some sort of corruption. do you suspect i'm on the take from comcast? if that's what you're implying, just say so in plain language. and i'll deal with you accordingly.
That thought of yours never entered my mind. My statements are what they are, as I have now stated repeatedly and emphatically. Nothing more or nothing less.
Mike McDonald
To Mr. Garfield's closing comment, "...wonder if we really need to cure cancer. Maybe it just needs a jingle."
I seriously hope that is said with a twinge of sarcasm in that you can sing warm fuzzy songs all you want, but it won't magically cure the poor service that is Comcast.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c245/Chris_Van/the_jesus-787564.gif
if not anything more, the conversation points out that this campaign seems to instill very differing opinions in lots of people. I personally love it and I do have a better feel for comcast on seeing it (though I'm a directTV customer and not a fan of their customer service either, but that is another story). but I also liked comcastic, too.
my wife, however, not an ad person at all, a healthcare pro and average coach critic consumer, cringes every time it comes on. mutes the tv even. then my mom in Ft Lauderdale calls me last night, she is 80, and asks if I've seen the ad and says she loves it. her current fave. go figure.
so, some love it. some hate it. nothing more nothing less. will it make me choose comcast? dont think so, but I am itching to see what ATT Uverse offers when they roll thru the Atlanta burbs soon, directTV is a good service and brand too, but their cust service is IMHO not good enough. and no ad will cure me of that.
My Dish company isn't DISH-riffic either. I keep getting screwed on the packages I have to buy in order to watch a handful of channels I like to watch. I don't want ESPN, I don't care about Disney channel, I loathe Noggin, Nick at Nite, Soap Net, QVC and the other fifteen thousand sports channels I have to put up with.
I just want a company that will give me the choice of eleven channels. And that's ALL I want to pay for. Why in God's good name does every friggin' Cable or Dish company have to cram down 200 more channels down our throats when we just want to watch and pay for eleven of them?
I have heard rumors of a new satellite company coming out this year. The name is under wraps but it's TV Programming Your Way. Features Frank Sinatra singing his classic song as part of their ads which will be out soon I guess. Their advertising isn't being done by BBDO or any large firm. It's in house and under wraps (top secret I guess).
I was at a party in San Francisco and was show a pocket commercial on someone's iPOD. According to the source, you can buy individual channels from the new dish service and the minimum service fee will be $29 a month. Add the movie (premium) channels for $5 bucks more. Whatever YOU want. And never have to pay for channel packages again.
Bart | Santa Fe, NM