5 Hilarious Ways Ads Tried To Make Boring Products Cool

5

You Can Control Your Land Rover's Seats From The Sky If You Need To (You Won't)

Land Rover suggests that wealthy people who buy luxury vehicles are much more adventurous than they actually are, so when the time came to let the market know about their new remote seat-folding technology, they did it the only way the know how: by dropping a dude out of the sky.

The commercial takes place at an ambiguous "military testing facility," to cement its association with the macho armed forces types, even though this brand is mostly driven by people whose only combat experience is with various retail employees.

Jaguar Land RoverCan't get any more military than a small prop plane with hashtags written on the wings.

Then Bear Grylls pops up, shouts that it's his job to test Land Rover products "in extreme situations," and manufactures one such (wholly unnecessary) situation.

Jaguar Land RoverIt seems like testing under extreme passive-aggressive silence would be more customer-focused, but we guess that doesn't move as many cars.

He's testing Land Rover's new "intelligent seat fold technology," which appears to be a simple smartphone app. It can purportedly reconfigure your Land Rover's seats from anywhere in the world, in case you find yourself so bored on a tropical beach or whatever that you decide to fiddle with your car seats. This could theoretically be demonstrated by using the app from, say, across a large parking lot -- easily the longest distance anyone would practically need to lower their seats. Instead, seven people jump out of the plane while one of them reprograms the seats of their waiting Land Rover to accommodate them.

Jaguar Land RoverIn a commercial where people jump out of a plane, this is somehow supposed to be the exciting part.

Finally! Now all those luxury SUV fans who find themselves suddenly making a bunch of friends while hurtling to the ground from 3,000 feet in the air, and decide to go out for hot wings with all of them in the event that they survive the landing, and can't stand to wait five seconds while the seats reconfigure on the ground like a reasonable person, have a car just for them. All none of them.

4

Chevrolet Set A Grizzly Bear Loose To Own Ford

In 2015, Chevrolet saw an opportunity to cut down its longtime rival, Ford. They'd just found out the new F-150 would be made with aluminum rather than steel. They could have pointed out that, while crash tests proved the new F-150 to be perfectly safe, aluminum vehicles do cost more to repair. Instead, they released a grizzly bear.

In this commercial, the test subjects (allegedly "real people" and "not actors") are locked in a cement room with two empty cages, one made of aluminum and one made of steel. They do not immediately piss themselves, which is our first clue that they might indeed be actors.

ChevroletOr at least real people who never went to a Saw movie.

3

Kraft Crave And Devour: Frozen Food You Eat With Your Wang

Frozen food has three things going for it: It's easy, it's easy, and it's easy. You wouldn't think it would need a hard sell with all those points, but Kraft Canada's Crave line gives you the hardest sell.

According to this commercial, Crave is the hip, cool frozen food brand, here to "grab the frozen food aisle by the snowballs." The spokesman even helpfully mimes this for you, in case the implication was too subtle.

He goes on to inform the viewer that "Crave isn't just 'meat,' it's bacon." He actually does the air quotes, as if to imply that flesh that isn't cured or from a pig somehow doesn't count.

Kraft HeinzEither seems like a pretty generous reaction to frozen food.

2

Checkers Called Its Burgers "Hi-Performance Human Fuel"

In the 1990s, fast food chain Checkers advertised its burgers not as a regrettable choice that makes you sluggish and pre-diabetic, but as man fuel to rev up your dick-engine. Sure, a lot of pop culture in the 1990s was extreme and radical, but this was a new level. In the (animated) ads, good-looking street racers in muscle cars go to insane lengths to get sweet, sweet Checkers burgers. It's The Fast And The Furious as a cartoon, but all about burgers.

1

CPA Canada Desperately Wants You To Think It's Cool

Being an accountant might sound boring, but that's only because it is. However, it is important work, and for the type of person who gets excited about spreadsheets and tax forms, it's a good living. There's no shame in that. CPA Canada, however, seems to disagree. In their commercial for ... something, a cool raspy voice lists off a number of things that accountants absolutely do not do while a variety of accountants absolutely do not do them, just to prove how unboring accounting absolutely is not. The logic is ... questionable.

How do you like those human rights and environmental protections you have? Enjoying those, are you? Well, thank accountants. Not scores of politicians, lawyers, and activists. Nope, it was all the guys with the calculators.

CPA Canada

CPA CanadaKeeping the world-influencing visionaries out of jail for tax evasion is some contribution.