Yesterday, New York Magazine pointed out a recent Michele Bachmann-bashing subway ad from the ever-clever Manhattan Mini Storage, complaining that the company isn’t even attempting to make their ads relate to the product — storage — at all anymore. Bachmann’s level of intelligence aside, we agree, and the ad reminded us of a few other advertisements that seem completely irrelevant to the product at hand. We’ve never really understood these kinds of ads, whether on print or tape — we appreciate a certain amount of absurdity, but after a point, how do you expect people to even know what you’re advertising? That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy them a lot of the time, but since studies show time and time again that advertisements don’t work unless they actually talk about the product they’re selling, we’re not sure why these kinds of ads persist. Nonetheless, they’re fun to look at, so check out our picks after the jump. And we know there are a million of these, so please chime in with your own favorites!
Manhattan Mini Storage Manhattan Mini Storage has shown many controversial and political ads in its day, but this is the most irrelevant to their supposed purpose.
Levi’s Not only are there no Levi’s in this commercial, there are no people. It’s banking on absurdity to sell clothing, but only making it up to absurdity.
Cadbury Eggs We admit, we love this ad, but is it the chocolate that is making their eyebrows do that? Is it desire for chocolate? Unclear.
Pantene Pro-V This 4-minute Thai Pantene commercial is like a little movie in itself. But, um, we don’t think the girl’s hair had anything to do with her learning the violin.
Pepsi Max Wait, so Pepsi Max will make us better at conning people into giving us jobs? Or, is it more for assisting us with awkward celebration street dancing? Really, it could be either.
Playstation 2 We get that this ad (directed by David Lynch, no less) is meant to show us that playing video games is like living out your dreams. But, it’s not really. And ultimately, this is just a dog twitching in its sleep.
Diesel We find this whole series of “Be Stupid” ads completely ridiculous and borderline offensive, but this one is just utterly irrelevant to the product at hand. Isn’t Diesel trying to sell jeans? We don’t see any jeans. All we see are unappealingly defaced man panties and a bonfire.
Mac’s Convenience Stores (Warning: May be semi-NSFW) So, this highly insane commercial, which features a pair of cartoonish lesbians making out in their undies against a tree that is actually a monster before mining it for its WTF juice is supposed to advertise Mac’s, a chain of Canadian convenience stores? WTF is right.
Microsoft Much like an episode of Seinfeld, this commercial has a lot of talking, but is about nothing and goes nowhere. But you guys, Jerry Seinfeld supports Microsoft.
EDS Even though at the end of this commercial, they try to explain what they do, “bringing together ideas” and “managing the complexities of the digital economy” sound like those catch-all phrases that could really be referring to anything.