This is me being picky

Okay, so I know it's no secret that about 99% of commercials suck these days. I also know that I'm probably the only person that does not bother to mute the ads, and so most of you happily live your life never realizing how truly bad these ads are. But I do listen, and there are a few ads that irk me right now because the people making them seem to have no clue what they're talking about. So, I'm calling them out.

Offender #1: Natural Defense Dog Food

This ad spends most of its time showing well-groomed dogs in various stages of harvesting and shipping plants, presumably for them to eat. Then comes the tag-line at the end of the commercial: "Health promoting extracts: if they could get them on their own, they would." The narrator lets you know exactly what extracts your dog is looking for, which come from plants like marigold and myrtle, and that this dog food will protect your pet for life.

Now, I'm not sure what dogs this company has met, but all the dogs I know don't seem all that concerned about eating healthy. They just eat pretty much whatever they can find. In fact, I'm almost 100% certain that even if dogs COULD get these extracts on their own, they'd choose to eat sausages instead. That's not to say that you shouldn't get healthy food for your dogs, but saying that the dog would choose healthy food is like saying your kids would love to eat broccoli if you would just tell them it's healthy.

Offender #2: Reach Total Care

This commercial boasts that Reach has created the new future in manual toothbrushes. How? By adding a hole to the handle for your thumb to sit in. They claim this increases your ability to control the toothbrush, and then say that the bristles fit better and clean better than a toothbrush without a hole. Doesn't it sound amazing?

First of all, not once in my life have I ever felt that I didn't have enough "control" over my toothbrush. This makes me very skeptical that this hole will somehow significantly improve my teeth-cleaning experience. Also, the only change to the brush that is mentioned is this hole, and yet they zoom in to show how the bristles fit better and clean better. To me, this implies that the hole in the handle somehow magically affects how the bristles fit to your tooth. I'm sure that's not what they mean, but that's what I take away from the commercial. And I call bullshit.

Offender #3: CTV

CTV wants you to watch the Olympics on their channel, so they've made a series of commercials showing how excited everyone is and inviting you to watch with them. The general theme of these ads is that the "spark that started in Vancouver" is spreading around the world, and now everyone believes. I'm not sure what they believe in, but they do. So watch with CTV, okay?

On top of the fact that this commercial basically makes no sense, I would like to point out that the Olympics have been around for a LONG time. This isn't even the first time they've been to Canada. So why do we in Vancouver think we're so special that we managed to send a spark around the world just by hosting them? People got excited about the Olympics long before we came around, and any excitement they're feeling this year has nothing to do with us.

Offender #4: Lysol No Touch Soap Pumps

I won't go on about this too long because I already talked about it here, but it deserves mentioning again. Seriously, it doesn't matter if you touch a germy soap pump, because YOU ARE GETTING SOAP TO WASH YOUR HANDS! Come on, people. You're smarter than this.

Now that I've spent a whole blog nit-picking on ads that no one really cares about, I'll finish off with two that did it right. They may not be super accurate, but at least they're funny. Enjoy.