Awkward Humor in Advertising

[AgentGreen]

In the last few months, we've had The "Berries and Creme dance" commercial, the "Old stereotypically asian guy saing 'You hungry for HOT POCKET' and ringing a gong" commericals, and now we have a guy trying to treat acne with a badger while his friend uses Oxy pads...

Why has this stupid humor caught on so well? I liked it when it was just the "Berries and Creme dance" and that was basically the only surrealistically awkward commercial on the air. Now it's everywhere. Since when did things have to be awkward to be funny? Why not something that's just satirically funny? Or just surreal and cartoony without being awkward?

[Ex-Cyber]

I think/hope that it's just the bandwagon effect, and we'll get something different once advertisers realize that the novelty has worn off.

[S. Thompson]

As far as the hot pockets guy - it'd be a little silly to have a non-Asian guy speaking broken English and ringing a gong. Come on now, man.

- Fuzmeister

[CupNoodle]

You're just now noticing this trend? It started after OMG LOL AQUATEEN HUNGER FORCE ADULTS SWIM IS DA BOMB LOL.

[SadisticSaviorX]

OMG LOL AQUATEEN HUNGER FORCE ADULTS SWIM IS DA BOMB LOL.

I kno!!1

[404NotFound]

Yeah, it's pretty easily dubbed "Adult Swim advertising," in my opinion.

All seemed to start with the [adult swim] style bumps. Heck, I remember for awhile they were running commercials on adultswim that perfectly emulated the bumps, except they were ads. That's why for awhile [as] was putting their symbol in corner of the screen during bumps.

[S. Thompson]

Skittles ads are probably the worst.

- Fuzmeister

[az_bont]

Skittles ads are probably the worst.

I always quite liked this one:

But the kings of surreal adverts are probably Irn Bru. There's a few dozen of them on Youtube, and most of them have me in fits, especially this one (which I think was eventually pulled after a couple of people complained):

[Egotistical EvilN]

I like this new style of advertising.

[MulletMan13]

Some of it is good, some of it is completely ridiculous.

The Sierra Mist beard combover one was great, as are the Snickers commercials.

[curt_grymala]

I liked the new Raisin Bran Crunch commercial the first few times I saw it. I'm talking about the one where the guy talks about the dream he had where there were no raisins. Then, at the end of the commercial, the guy who looks a little like Horatio Sans says something about having a dream where he and Sunny (the Raisin Bran mascot) were out at a club dancing to techno.

[DaMadFiddler]

Yeah, it's pretty easily dubbed "Adult Swim advertising," in my opinion.

All seemed to start with the [adult swim] style bumps. Heck, I remember for awhile they were running commercials on adultswim that perfectly emulated the bumps, except they were ads. That's why for awhile [as] was putting their symbol in corner of the screen during bumps.

The weirdest thing they ever did--it caught me so off-guard that it took me a full ten minutes to realize what was going on--was when they started running Christmas promotionals in March.