Advertising. Commercials. The American dream. Sell me stuff
and I will buy it. Show me the stuff you're selling and I will consider buying
it and then buy it. Let your advertising be an invisible hand that guides me to
the product you are trying to sell. Ensure the invisible hand will not become
the overlord of my nightmares. Do not let the hand take me away from those I
love. They wouldn't understand. Please. Commercials... Advertising.
If I were to compile a list of the 100 greatest commercials
of all-time, there would be a lot of
commercials on that list. 100 of them, actually. I could do the same list but
change the time period, and there would still be 100 commercials on that list. I
will not change the number. In my
opinion, 100 is the only number that
should exist. But that's a story for another time. You can square root it, and
it's used for percentages. But again, another time.
The thing is, if you decided to examine the list, you'd
notice a certain fast-food restaurant does not appear on that list. Any of the
lists. Wendy's. Home of the old fashioned hambugler.
Why is that, you ask? Why are there no commercials from
Wendy's on the list? Is there something wrong with them? Is there something
wrong with me? Do foxes and wolves
live together? It seems like they
could be good friends? Let me put my
finger to your mouth and shush you. I'm about to clear up like half of that.
I remember seeing a Wendy's commercial once. A little part
of me died that day. The part responsible for dreams. I don't want to say
they're bad, but we all have to do things we don't want to do. They're bad. I
do not like them. There. I said it.
Judge for yourself, but you will see that you agree with me.
You will see the commercials are bad. You will see that the list is good. You
will tell me that and validate me as a human
being. You will notice all the bad that they crammed into these short
segments of seemingly harmless advertising. Trust me. I am not here to hurt
you. I'm told that I am nice. "Help your cat out of a tree" nice, "after
I put it there" nice.
But I can't be nice about this. The acting gives me pain. The ideas behind the commercials
give me more pain. I would not be
friends with Wendy in real life. Which is actually a large portion of what I
look for in a commercial. Would I be friends with the characters. I might talk to Wendy. Go for coffee every
now and then. But no bowling. Never
bowling.
So let's get to it. There's a revolution underhand in the
commercial world. In the battlefield of corporate competition, I am Mel Gibson
charging forward on a horse made of good commercials. I am in pursuit of
freedom... and better commercials. In the spirit of this talk, I will now pitch
you some commercials. Let me bear my organs to you as you wind them up on a
large wooden real. Admire my organs. My organs are commercials.
1: Ghost of Wendy's past.
We open with a panning view of a McDonalds restaurant. It's
night. The viewers can imply that if you go to McDonald's, the sun will go away . As a continuous stream of no
cars enter the McDonald's drive-thru, there's a rustling in a nearby dumpster.
You see a head.
It is at this point we flash a quick frame of a baconator. Now,
the viewers know they want something, but what is it. This near unseen method
of subliminal advertising is known as moistening
the chops.
The head emerges. Followed by a body. The body is attached
to the head. The body/head combination commonly known as a person climbs out of
the dumpster covered in trash. It is
Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. He looks at the camera, and with the lost look of
an amnesia patient says "I unfreeze the chicken with my body heat".
He slowly meanders across the parking lot to the McDonald's.
As he approaches he unsheathes his spatula. The one he takes pictures with
while flexing. A time lapse then
shows him slowly beating down the McDonald's restaurant with the spatula. It doesn't work.
How is Dave Thomas alive. He was dead right. Right, kind of.
We flash to a graveyard. The camera slowly pans up to a grave. It reads
"Here lies Dave Thomas; we will never stop eating your meat Dave. It is too
good". Just as he'd want to be remembered. We see the ground in front of
the gravestone, it is dug up. Something has been removed. Possibly a body. This is where the viewer makes the
connection that this is related to the first half of the commercial.
Off to the side, we see a baconator. And what's that on the
ground beside it. A spade shovel. We
want the viewer to know that Wendy's will bring you back from the dead. The
screen fades to black and we are left with "Wendy's". This commercial
will be 45 minutes long.
2. Prom
We open on a shot of a girl, sitting in a chair in front of
her mirror. It is prom night. The night that all high scholars anticipate, and
so she is excited. She has everything ready. Her hair, perfection. Her dress,
the one she's always dreamed of. The boy of her dreams, picking her up in 15
minutes. Nothing could ruin this
night. It's too good to be true.
But it is. She shrieks in terror as she realizes that she has
completely neglected her makeup. Not one makeup has touched her face. How is
she supposed to present herself as herself, if she's not being not herself.
Good question. Bad wording but, good question. She can't. She simply can't.
Panic sets in.
We see a nineteen-eighties style montage of her thinking of
what to do. The song playing is 'more than a feeling'. Because nausea is, more
than a feeling. The montage is different shots of her, just sitting there. The
montage is completely unnecessary.
All of a sudden, with the clock ticking down, we see a shot
of her in the mirror. Smirking. A smug grin that says "I'm about to do
something." And guess what, does something she do. In from the bottom of
the screen, we see her hand slowly and triumphantly rise towards her face.
Holding none other than... a Wendy's classic single with cheese.
Maintaining the smug grin, she presses the single
cheeseburger to her face and rubs it in a circle motion, all over her face. The ketchup, mayo, cheese, and pickles all swirl
around in a circle-like fashion. She stops, looks at what she has done, and
sighs. It's... perfect.
What we are convey to the viewer is the idea of dreams. And
that Wendy's will fulfill any and every dream you possibly have. The viewer now
knows that anything is possible when you choke down some good old Wendy's food.
The screen fades to black. Wendy's.
Before the commercial is through, we see the classic scene
where the girl makes her way down the stairs. Slowly, each graceful step descends
her to the ground floor as she lightly grips the handrail. With her Wendy's
applied to her face she smiles. The camera flips to the boy waiting at the
bottom. Smiling. Licking his lips.
And that's it... for now. This will be an ongoing process. Continually adding new, exciting, possibly erotic ideas to the Wendy's advertising arsenal. Stay tuned.
