Last year, I hailed the arrival of the E*Trade Baby commercials as the savior of the Super Bowl.
This year? You tell me.
Whaddya think?
Do you like these new commercials or is E*TRADE trying too hard?
Monday Morning HR Humor: New E*TRADE Baby Commercials
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
These commercials creep me out! Please tell me what makes them so cute to everyone else? I love babies…..but there is something about babies talking about stocks that makes me sckeeve!
BTW I scheeved the Evian skating babies commercials too. I know – wildly successful marketing program. What do I know?
I’m not into the talking babies either.
In general, either I’m overly-cranky or the commercials were 87% more anti-women than usual. I’m not normally that bugged, because I get that it’s the Superbowl, and that GoDaddy stuff is going to happen. But “wear the pants?” And “I will watch your vampire shows with you?” WTF?
The only commercial that even stands out to me was the one with Oprah, Dave Letterman and Leno. The rest…bah.
The talking baby thing was clever but I think it’s lost its surprise factor.
Aside from the Oprah/Dave/Jay ad the one I really liked were the Denny’s spots. Something about chickens screaming had me laughing my ass off. Especially the 2nd commercial, where you didn’t know that was the premise until well into the commercial.
I believe this is two years in a row that CareerBuilder has featured someone without pants in their commercial. Odd that two or three commercials had people not wearing pants, and two or three commercials had some variation on people/things being thrown into a hole in the ground.
The only thing worse than talking babies is pretending that the are romantically involved!
Yes, I know. I’m five years old, I swear, but these are made of WIN (especially space chicken):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTigSNSjLcI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKpTcuH5rP0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQkxYUP1i5A
@ Patrick–I wish I could’ve enjoyed the Denny’s commercials. However, I had just watched the documentary “Food, Inc.” the night before, followed by a buttload of PETA videos. I watched one of the Denny’s commercials (on Hulu; I’m so not a football person) and the timing/premise was just too overwhelming for me.
For the record, I never thought I’d become one of those PETA fanatics, but I’m actually about ten steps closer to it than I was . . . so yes. I felt bad for the Denny’s chickens.
The e-trade commercials were still great, but I don’t think they were quite as good as last year.
Personally, I loved the screaming chickens. Perhaps it was the alcohol I was drinking. *shrug*
I came back to say: the Google ad. I hadn’t seen it until just now. Liked it.
It’s interesting that Google is advertising at all…because, ummm, aren’t they, like, Google? Did they need to spend a couple million dollars to make sure everyone had heard of them?
But I liked the ad.
The babies were not bad. But I have to agree with Kerry, The Google Ad was simply the best. It was creative in the fact that it did not get overly creative as the rest of the commercials tried to be.
First of all– I hate commercials of any kind. The thought of Corporate America subliminally mind-washing a mass populice with charming, witty, sentimental, or, I dare say, “funny” hogwash to push their mediocre products makes me ill.
Anyway– with that out of the way– any talking baby commercial is SO BAD it’s funny to a certain degree. Seeing Betty White talk smack— and Abe Vigoda at the end had me laughing, I have to admit. Was it me– or did you notice a servere increase in the commercials “creepy” factor this year?? I still can’t get the picture of a shrunken Troy Polamalu out of my head! And the bad animation—ugh! There’s the subliminal for you—-
I thought the best commercial was the Doritos spot where the dog put the shock collar on the guy and stole the bag of chips.
I liked the Dave/Oprah/Jay commercial. I was asking myself, “Did that really happen?”
These E*TRADE commercials have always creeped me out…until the shankapotomus commercial. I LOVE when that baby calls the guy a shankapotomus! I don’t really like the rest. The out-take video was a little funny.
@Fran – Evian babies…I literally felt a little sick after watching that. It’s just weird and creepy.
My fave Super Bowl commercial was the Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales and the calf/longhorn. Now that’s cute!
I didn’t mind the E*TRADE spots, but the screaming chickens got on my last nerve pretty quickly.
Let me summarize:
- I liked the google ad.
- Didn’t like Doritos.
- Dennys chickens were meh, IMHO, but I like free Grand Slams. Yeah!
- Lots of prairie dogs, no pants, and other themes from 4 years ago.
What did you guys think of the Monster ad?
Unfortunately, I guess I don’t remember the Monster ad that well. I do remember seeing an ad for them, though, so it worked on that front at least.
I agree with Kerry that there seemed to be more ads geared towards insecure men this year. Dude, you don’t need a Dodge Charger to be manly; you need to grow up.
I’m also not sure what was up with the Audi ad that pretty much said that environmental awareness is the same thing as living in a Stalinist police state. Yes, recycling is such a huge threat to our freedoms. Whatever.
Really, it seemed like the overarching theme of the commercials this year was that responsibility and maturity are terrible, oppressive forces that keep people from enjoying their lives.
LOVE Monster’s fiddle-playing beaver! Great! As a side note, out of PURE COINCIDENCE, the hosts of the Super Bowl party we went to had napkins with a beaver on them, which said “Dam Great Party.” HA!
The smarmy, wisecracking babies have annoyed from my initial viewing, so perhaps I’m already inclined to give these a thumbs down. The idea of babies with girlfriends really disgusted me. But the brand is well established as young people smarter than the rest of us, so my opinion doesn’t REALLY matter. And it works because people remember it.
There were a lot of ads of people in their skivvies…not sure what that’s about.
I loved the Google ad too. Now that’s story telling.