The Dawn of Weird Advertising

I mostly eat leftovers for dinner. I always eat it in front of the TV, like any good American. Last night I had a four-day-old piece of sausage pizza while watching the evening news, ignoring most of the commercials in between. But there was one commercial that got my attention — one commercial so utterly weird and confusing — that I had to stop chewing my leftover pizza just to think about it.

It was an ad for General Electric, featuring Jeff Goldblum as some kind of glamorous Liberace-type guy talking about home lighting. And, my God, it was weird. Really weird. Between the funny-looking man servant, the talk about “kissing your horribly-lit, non successful life goodbye,” and the piano in a jacuzzi, I was totally confused. I was also laughing hysterically.

What was a company like GE — one of the world’s largest, most reputable companies — trying to accomplish with an ad like this? It seemed like a move into a completely different market. Other GE ads I’ve seen were nothing like this. Was GE trying to sell smart lightbulbs to scatter-brained, Internet-obsessed millennials?

It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a big company like GE use weird advertising. Other brands like Old Spice are pretty well-known for their strange ads featuring guys like Isaiah Mustafa and Terry Crews. Close to fifty million people have watched “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercial on YouTube. And for an ad — something most people hit “Click To Skip” in order to avoid — this is seriously impressive.

And the even weirder ads featuring Terry Crews:

Some brands have been at the whole weird advertising thing longer than others. Brands like Skittles and Starburst are two that come to mind. But these are brands that, for the most part, market to a much younger crowd. Weird, awkward humor makes sense for these kinds of brands.

This Skittles ad is one of my favorites:

So, what’s the point in making ads like these? They’re ads that make no sense, ads that feel like they were dreamt up by someone who accidentally drank a little too much cold medication.

After rolling around the GE ad in my brain for a few hours, I realized the point of it all. There wasn’t an underlying purpose or unseen message. The only thing the ad was trying to do was lodge itself in your mind like a splinter, and it was damn good at it.

These are also the kind of ads people want to share. Forget that they’re even selling a certain product or service. If they’re weird enough, they become more than just another ad. They become videos that people actually seek out on their own. They go viral. Why? Because people love weird, funny things, especially videos.

Not everyone will find these weird ads funny or even enjoyable, but everyone who pays any attention to them will remember them. And that’s all that really matters.