Best and worst commercials of the year

Posted: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 6:00 AM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

This is our sixth annual summer TV commercial contest, and it's perhaps the most surprising yet. Usually, from the minute your comments start rolling in, I can tell which commercial is going to be named our favorite and which our least favorite. This year, I must have changed my mind five or six times. Reader votes would lean heavily one way, and then another.

Ozzy's Crazy Train of charm mowed down the Prius.

BEST AD: OZZY HITS PRIUS WITH A CRAZY TRAIN
At first I figured the Prius ad, where people dressed as flowers and butterflies pop up in tune to "Let Your Love Grow," had the best commercial honor in the bag. It was weird, it was happy, it used cool technical elements, it even had a YouTube behind-the-scenes explanatory video. Definitely a neat ad.

But just when it seemed like the Prius was on the fast track to victory, it was knocked flying by a Crazy Train. This year's best commercial honor goes to Ozzy Osbourne for his series of Samsung Mobile cell phone ads, specifically, one in which he must text to make himself understood, and another in which he uses his phone as a personal assistant, including using it to discover a bathroom he didn't know his mansion even had.

What can I say? People love Ozzy. They love that this bat-biting Prince of Darkness has turned into a gentle, fumbling dad-about-the-house. And give Samsung credit, the ad smartly showcases the different benefits of the phone. Sure, you may not use it to make yourself understood at Starbucks or to find your way around your own house, but you know what it can do. Many celebrity endorsement ads fall flat (ahem -- Jillian Barberie) but this one, well, rocks.

I have to say that a favorite of mine was Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World. He didn't do as well with your comments and in the vote as I expected he would, but maybe that's because the ads aren't seen as often as some others. I'm sure it doesn't matter to the Man either way. After all, his blood still smells like cologne.

I won! I won! Or maybe: I lost, I lost!

WORST AD: SASQUATCH-LENGTH ARMPIT HAIR
I hadn't even seen your choice for this year's worst ad when the contest started. And now that I've had to watch it numerous times in order to write about it, I'd really like to go back in time and pretend I never saw it. The winner (loser?) is a Boost Mobile ad, meaning cell-phone ads take both the best and the worst honors this year. But where Ozzy's ad hits all the right notes, this ad not only doesn't sell the product, but it grosses viewers out to the point where they actively steer away from the company being advertised.

In the ad that takes our worst-ad crown, a man and woman are riding on a tandem bike, and at first it appears that her long brown hair is blowing back in his face. But then she lifts her arm, and you realize that it's her gargantuan armpit hair. "You think this is wrong?" she asks the audience, going on instead to say that it's what other cell-phone companies do to their customers that's wrong, claiming that what Boost does is "unwronged."

This ad is just one in a series. In one, a pig chows down on a big juicy ham, and in another, a coroner eats a sub sandwich while working on a corpse -- at one point, dropping it onto the dead man's body.

Yes, the ad series is going for the gross-out factor, and I'm not saying that doesn't ever work. But it's also just kind of stupid. ""Unwronged"? That word, I do not think it means what you think it means. And while the Ozzy cell-phone ad smartly hypes what the phone does, all this ad does is moan about what other phone companies do.

As far as commercials and armpits go, I actually think this sweat-gusher for Axe Dry anti-perspirant is nastier, but it only came up in your comments a few times.

And personally, my least-favorite commercial this year is this one, where the woman sucks down a cup of Dannon yogurt in the supermarket, complete with nasty sucking sounds. It definitely was a contender, but just didn't earn as much hatred as the armpit hair woman.

Congrats, Ozzy and Samsung, and, uh, "congrats," woman with enormous armpit hair and Boost Mobile. And thanks to all who contributed, whether you left a comment, suggested an ad, or just followed along. I always get a kick out of this summer contest and hope you do, too. Let's touch base on commercials again in a few months, just to see what new contenders are out there for next year.

EMAIL THIS