Last week I mentioned having logged over 200,000 miles in my trusty and beloved Subaru Outback.  (“Nice try getting back in my good graces!  Did that trampy German sportswagen throw you over and now you think I’ll just take you back?” - Subie.  Hey, I have to try to placate the car somehow.)  With all that car time on my long commutes, I’ve heard a lot of radio programming.  And in that programming, some of the commercials are memorable, not because of any intent, desire, need, etc.  to use the products and or services advertised, (Why the need for a disclaimer? - ed.  That’ll be clear soon enough.) but because the ads are either so bad they grate on my nerves every time I hear them, or I wonder what’s going on with a lot of other people in the radio show’s target demographic, or because I find myself wondering about how the ads were written and produced.

Annoying Ads

So what in the world am I talking about?  Well, as to the first category of ads, those that annoy me every time I hear them, if you have ever heard the “Ty Coughlin” radio commercials for his online marketing system, you may know what I’m talking about.  He, and I will play along for now with the notion that it really is Ty Coughlin on the commercials, talks in his ads about being a beach bum in Hawaii with some kind of internet marketing program that will allow you to make thousands of dollars a month from the comfort of your home by doing next to nothing.  There is, naturally, a web site, which if memory serves is www.50kamonth.com (Is that really the web address? - ed.  I have no idea if that is how the web site is spelled, and if iWeb turns that into a link when I post this and you click it and it goes somewhere completely different, I had nothing to do with it).

The first ads I heard for this guy and his “system” were annoying because they tried to use the fiction of not being a scripted and produced ad.  They start out like a recording of a conversation that gets interrupted, with laughter and the guy who apparently turns out to be Ty Coughlin asking when they will be ready for him to start the commercial.  When told that they have already started, Ty feigns some mock annoyance and begins his pitch.

A later ad was particularly bad because it sounded to me like the exact same guy from the first commercial, who presumably is Ty Coughlin, but this time he was doing a testimonial on having used the Ty Coughlin internet marketing system and even got to meet Ty, and found that he’s a “really cool dude.”  Well, it’s good to know that Ty thinks of himself as a really cool dude, but not so great that apparently the premise of the commercial is that you’ve never heard any of the prior commercials so you don’t realize it’s Ty talking about himself.  Of even worse, you heard the earlier ads and are not sharp enough to have noticed it’s all the same guy talking about himself!

What’s Going On In The World I Don’t Know About Ads

The second category of ads that always confuse me are those for male prostate pills and medicines.  I think the ads are usually for something called beta prostate, but I’m too lazy right now to try to dogpile it online.  (dogpile? - ed.  Yes, it aggregates various search engines to perform online searching, so I can trick myself into thinking I’m not using Google even though that’s one of the aggregated engines.  Why not use Google? - ed.  Because I think Google is just slightly evil and creepy.)

The thing that gets me with these ads is the casual reference to a comparison of the effectiveness of the product being advertised to the use of something called saw palmetto tablets.  (Is that really how you spell ‘saw palmetto’? - ed.  Yes, that I did dogpile.)  And every time I hear those ads, I think, “What the (*# is ‘saw palmetto’ and how does everyone else listening to this sports talk radio program know what the (*&# it is?!”

I’m willing to concede that the prospect of taking one tablet of whatever is being advertised is probably better than taking 50 ‘saw palemetto’ tablets, whatever they are, but it doesn’t make me any happier or better informed after hearing the commercial.

Am I Reading Too Much Into This Ad?

Finally, if you’ve ever heard ads for the Boston Medical Group and its Boston Method, perhaps you’ve had some of the same questions I have about the commercials.  If you haven’t heard the ads, they are for a clinic for the treatment of male “intimacy” issues such as not enough lead in the pencil or what the ads delicately refer to as “performance issues.”  (Oh, THAT’S why the earlier disclaimer! - ed.  Yes, exactly.)

As an initial matter, I’m always a little confused about the clinic’s claims that in most cases they will show you results during your first office visit.  Given what they seem to be trying to help their patients with, I’m not sure I really want to be thinking about exactly how these guys are able to demonstrate results in the clinic on your first visit to get help with an itchy trigger finger, so to speak.  It always makes me wonder if they are dangerously close to the line in advertising for the sale of sexual services.

But the really interesting part of the commercials are the writing and pacing of the dialogue, especially given the nature of the services they are trying to sell.  When the narrator gives the listeners the clinic’s toll free phone number, he first gives the number speaking quite rapidly.  Then he immediately says something like, “Wait, slower, 1- 800.whatever.”  I have to think this is a deliberate allusion to the whole concept of someone getting over-excited, moving too quickly, and, well, you get the picture.  So in a sense I think it’s a very clever way of getting a message across that they understand the problem some listeners are having and that they know how to help with it.

Or maybe I’m really overthinking the whole commercial.