Ever since my family cut the cable, I don’t watch a lot of ads on TV. We watch nearly everything streaming via our Roku these days, and we save a lot of money in the process. But some of the newer series we watch are available only on Hulu+, and that service still has advertisements. I have two main issues with this. First, I pay a monthly fee to watch Hulu+, so I shouldn’t also be forced to watch ads too. Second, Hulu+’s ads play over and over and over again, a problem that Hulu+ shares with the free Pandora service. But everyone once in a while, Hulu+ runs an ad that is not just annoying, but that I find creepy.
Like the following Hulu+ ad for Yakult.
Every single time I watch this ad, I’m reminded of the bad 80′s horror film The Stuff, where a white, yogurt-like substance bubbles out of the ground, is packaged up and sold, and later turns the people who eat it into zombies before devouring them from the inside out. The movie’s tagline: “Are you eating it… or is it eating you?”
Apparently Yakult is a strong believer in the “any publicity is good publicity” approach to marketing, given just how laughably bad the Yakult ad is even without the creepiness factor. But I’m not sure reminders potential customers of goop that eats you alive from the inside out is the best approach to selling a probiotic drink.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I know I’ll never drink the stuff….
And while I’m at it, how about the bad 5-Hour Energy ads where the attractive young woman plops herself down on the office worker’s desk and starts trying to sell him on drinking 5-Hour Energy. Does any office really work that way? Have they not heard about “sexual harassment?” Or is 5-Hour Energy really trying to imply that your regular office drone gets a chance with a sexy brunette just because he drinks their product?
Am I the only one that thinks a company that is willing to put the word ‘kult’ in their product may not be real?
Dude, it’s Japanese … therefore your argument about it reminding people of a goop that eats you alive from the inside out is invalid.
I’ve never had it, but it looks and sounds like Russian kefir to me and given that, i’ll pass. Probiotics or not.