Funny Animal Pictures

Best and Worst Commercials of 2006
By Heather Loftiss

We have reached the halfway point in the 2006 season of commercials. We kicked the season off with the studs and duds of the Superbowl commercials where we all loved the FedEx cavemen and the Budweiser Streaker. But this season also featured the duds: the Nationwide Fabio parody, the Diet Pepsi and Sierra Mist ads, the H3 Little Monster, the Sprint commercials, and the annoying Taco Bell guy.

Moving into the second half of 2006, the ads have somewhat rebounded with plenty of studs; but there are also plenty of duds still out there. Here are your Best and Worst of 2006:

Best – Sublymonal Advertising from Sprite

The latest ad from Sprite has quickly become an issue of debate on many online forums. People are loving it and others are hating it. Hit or miss advertising is very dependant on what demographic you’re in. If you hate it, it means you probably aren’t in their target market. The people who are loving this ad are teens and young adults who see it as a very new and creative type of commercial. The people who are hating it are the people who think it is offensive and repulsive (the eye turning into a mouth and the “Obey” slogan slapped across the screen while someone snaps their fingers in your face).

But you know what? The people who hate it are talking about it. The ad does its job with its target market and is extreme enough to get the other markets talking. It’s generating great buzz. And when you have a soft drink that already sells, you want the buzz.

Best – Jimmy Fallon/Parker Posey Dance from Pepsi

Continuing with the soft drink theme, we move to Pepsi. This ad came out at the very start of 2006 and features the song Streamline by Newton. The ad was done by the same guys who did the FedEx caveman commercial. There’s no dialogue. All they do is dance. So why is it a great commercial? They cast the right people, they used the right song, and Pepsi plastered it everywhere. The song became a hit in pop culture almost immediately. Critics of the commercial simply dislike Jimmy Fallon and are immediately turned off by his humor. They do not see the straightforward advertising methods used.