11 of the Weirdest Commercials of All Time
Most commercials only want your money. These want your sanity.
In the world of advertising, grabbing the viewer's attention is key.
Sure, you could just list off the benefits of whatever you're selling in a straightforward manner, but is that going to leave an impression?
You want your audience to take notice. You want to keep them thinking about your ad for days and weeks afterward — to infect their brains with a little consumerist parasite that reminds them to cough up their money in pursuit of a false sense of fulfillment. So anything you can do to make your ad stand out from the crowd is a good thing, right?
Well, maybe not anything... Sometimes commercials try so hard to achieve that memorable or viral effect that they veer into strange and disturbing territory. They stop being little tributes to capitalism and become vivid flashes of madness.
These 11 ads took that attention-grabbing ethos to strange and upsetting new heights. Maybe they were hoping for the kind of quirky virality that Old Spice has made iconic. What they got instead was...
Hyundai - Pipe Job
In 2012, Korean car maker Hyundai introduced the first commercially available hydrogen-powered car, the ix35.
There are numerous benefits to running a vehicle on hydrogen fuel cells, not least of which is the fact that the only exhaust it produces is water vapor. And how else would you advertise that amazing feature than by showing a man methodically trying — but failing — to kill himself?
Why, Hyundai? Just why?
Now go buy stuff.
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