Commercials used to be creative ads selling real products from real companies.
Now it's AI generated robots trying to sell me tai chi walking or articulation training. Sigh.
Edited to add: These creative ads from real companies became cultural catch phrases. "Yo quiero Taco Bell!" "Back off, get your own sandwich!" "Weaddababyitsaboy." Never gonna happen with today's AI slop ads.
Second, I’ve been curious about this for a while now but why the hell are ads so terrible now? Like it’s always some “influencer” talking about something that changed their life and it’s like a glow in the dark straw. People talking to camera in an overly exaggerated fashion always rubs me the wrong way. But they all lack any sense of creativity.
I used to work in advertising and basically, the medium is the message.
Say it's 1997. You are not getting up in the middle of Law & Order to go and buy a glow in the dark straw. Hell, if it's running during primetime it's probably not even possible to buy it right then. Hence, the ad had to work at the top of the sales funnel and be memorable and entertaining. Memorable enough that the next time you're at the mall, the straw stands out to you. Entertaining enough that when you see it, you'll feel good about it and buy.
Nowadays you totally can buy the straw at 2am without even getting up off your chair, so the straw guy is going to attack the bottom of the sales funnel. It'll be overstated benefits, a sense of urgency and/or scarcity, deceptive price anchoring, just all kinds of implicit and explicit pressure.
Back in 1997, there was also a kind of ad where you could buy at 2am: Infomercials. That's why online video ads overwhelmingly use the same techniques. Creativity is not required because the point of sale is really close.
489
u/ConceitedWombat Older Millennial Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26
Commercials used to be creative ads selling real products from real companies.
Now it's AI generated robots trying to sell me tai chi walking or articulation training. Sigh.
Edited to add: These creative ads from real companies became cultural catch phrases. "Yo quiero Taco Bell!" "Back off, get your own sandwich!" "Weaddababyitsaboy." Never gonna happen with today's AI slop ads.