Why Are TV Ads From Other Countries So Often Better Than Ours?
By Uncle Dave Wednesday August 3, 2011
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Because they actually have ad agencies employing people
• with some taste,
• with some fortitude,
• with some sense of humor,
• who aren’t just phoning it in,
• who actually have something to say,
• not just a bunch of lawyers,
• not just a bunch of accountants,
• not non-creative garbage (but I repeat myself, twice.)
I realize that “sense of humor” actually should have been some sensibility.
Its was a moving ad, not a funny one. (Humors can be anything that makes your blood flow.)
Ads, soap operas for the ADD.
Oh, I really needed to be tearing up at my desk at 9:26AM.
I’m a father of a teenaged daughter, and we’re having some tough times… this ad brought tears to my eyes.
Funny the nom de flame still works. There was NOTHING good about that ad. For a freaking life insurance company when the issue was health care coverage and more specifically in this case mental health care coverage: in Thailand????? You can’t get more complete BS than that other than the country being run by the military after a series of coups.
or-was it that the Dad still loved the only person he had any relationship to at all who disliked him enough to commit suicide to get away from him? His spidy sense must be pretty good though to feel her body hitting the bathroom floor—since he is deaf!
or-after all this was in the fact that when she came to under the influence of drugs and hypoxia that she held his hand and smiled???
Claptrap.
Please raise my insurance rates so I can be informed how much my carrier loves me.
Silly Hoomans.
#8 – In Thailand you have the freedom to choose not to buy life/health insurance. So you can die in a gutter if you want to.
I guess in Europe the ladies are topless in ads, so there’s a plus right there.
Good? It packs all the depression of a Swedish movie into a fraction of the time, so I guess that’s a kind of good.
You all have it wrong.
The US TV viewers would not stand (or sit) for 3 min. commercials.
Amar, your right !!! Come the 6 min Ad Break, we are usually off to the John, and the fridge after that !!!
no us company could afford a 3 min commercial in the us it is simply cost prohibitive to do. now they could do this on their web sites…or maybe through one of the newfangled hi-tech social sites..
I don’t subject myself to any of it any more since I got a CCrane Internet Radio.
The web may have it’s faults, (like reality), but it certainly has plenty of choice.
If you need to stare at your Costco 92 inch 3D wall sized television, go ahead. I’ll bet the commercials are particularly irritating as they assault your visual and aural neurons relentlessly. Why not strap the seven foot wide thing to your face so you can see real good.
Others have touched on most of the points. First of all, we only get to see the very, very best of foreign commercials. Like everything else in the world, 90% is crap, and soon forgotten. The 10% that’s actually good gets shown off and remembered.
And, no Americans won’t sit through 3 minute commercials. 30 seconds, yes. 12 minutes of assorted commercials with two of them repeated in the same break, yes. 30-60 minute infomercials, yes. Home Shopping Network, yes. But 3 minutes, no.
Still a touching commercial. Even if the whole plot is based on the fact that if the girl lives, Thai Life doesn’t have to pay on her death benefit. :).
In the mid to late 1980s, there was a feature-length film released annually (I think) that was made up of nothing but award-winning, usually foreign, television ads; perhaps 200 30-second ads for 100 minutes of running time. It showed a few times at mainstream theaters and possibly “art house” cinemas.
Does anyone remember the title?
I wouldn’t be surprised if after a showing the audience members were asked for their opinions on which ads were the most memorable?
The sad truth is that most companies know that Americans will buy any crap they put in front of us, so there is no need to spend any time, money or effort producing intelligent, thoughtful, or interesting commercials.
On top of that, the collective IQ of the country is going down. Otherwise, why would we continue to give up our voice to vote and keep letting these schmucks run our country and drive it into the ground.
Anybody that doesn’t become informed enough and get off the couch to vote should just STFU.
Sorry, I got a little off the topic…
Not better, they just lie better or differently.
Thanks, was a great video.
You call that better?! That seem as lame and self serving as all the ads we have here, especially around election time.
Ads are an deeply insightful view into a culture. When they’re not boring as shit.
Ad man Terry O’Reilly’s Age of Persuasion radio show and podcast is always terrific.
For anyone that cares and doesn’t have any conspiracy issues there’s a good drama movie along the same line as this clip. The movie is called Hear Me and it’s in Chinese. It’s a good movie if you’re up for tearing up more 🙂
were they selling mute dads? Not sure what the product was.
She’s lived with her deaf mute father her whole life and made absolutely no effort to learn how to sign? Good daughter.
This is as good as the dirt devil commercial though in a different flavor. I think the dirt devil ad may be better at getting you to remember the company name because the name does tie in to the add.
I’m assuming this one is weaker on selling the product because the name doesn’t seem to tie in with the video. I don’t speak the lingo so maybe there is a pun or something in there.
Two weaknesses: 1. I’m not sure it sells the product. 2. I liked it the first time but I don’t want to see it three times a day for a month. The fact that viewers quickly get to dislike a video like this would seem like a good reason not to make them.
Ummmmmm, I guess I’m a cold apathetic bastard, but that video was complete crap. That girl had a wonderful and caring father and she killed herself for it. That video just pissed me off. If that girl killed herself because she had a deaf mute dad, she did the world a service. That man deserved a better child than that selfish and self centered brat. There are millions of orphaned children around the would that would give anything for a father like that.
Ok, enough venting. I’m glad we don’t have pretentious commercials like that.
# 8 bobbo, “the country being run by the military after a series of coups.” Not exactly true, Robertissimo. The military has not been running the country for a couple of years. Not saying they won’t be again, though. So, what happens mow that democracy is reinstated? In the elections last month the people elected the sister (and presumed puppet) of the man the military deposed.
“His spidy sense must be pretty good” I wondered at that myself. I even rewatched that part to see if there was some other clue to the fall. But, nope. Thump and he turns to look at the source of the noise! They apparently did not cast the role from real deaf actors.
# 17 spsffan said, “First of all, we only get to see the very, very best of foreign commercials.”
Exactly. I live in Thailand, even speak some of the lingo, so I occasionally watch the local TV. There are two things that are difficult to do: find something on Thai TV worth watching and, trying to get through the commercial breaks. The commercials tend to the horribly frenetic.
#12 Thx pedro. It was better today. Thank goodness for small miracles. You never know with teens! 🙂
DOH! Perhaps because we only see “the best of the best” here.
Why do you find things in the last place you thought they’d be? Because you stop looking after you find them.
Some of you are complaining that it doesn’t seem like it’s selling the product and other complaints. Don’t forget, this was not made for American audiences. It was made for an entirely different culture than ours that has different sensibilities. For the Thais, it may sell the product perfectly.
And as for Faxon, #16, are there really that many people who don’t have a DVR so they can skip watching the ads? I read a statistic recently that the number of DVR owning people had skyrocketed in recent years.
Unca Dave?!?!?!
If you don’t watch the commercials, then you’re stealing the programming!
I just know you’re not a pirate. But I think I’m gonna call them Hollywood lawyers. Might be a bounty…