Daniel Harmon

See if you get this ad.

It took me sec, but I finally made the connection: don’t let down the stork (he fought off wolves for you after all). We all come into the world with unlimited potential; yet so many don’t feel like they live up to it. Instead, they end up pushing papers, scrubbing bathrooms, or flipping burgers.

I think we can all relate to some degree with the bored-out-of-his-wits office drone, yawning away his shift as he mindlessly performs his monotonous duties. And the tagline, “Your calling is calling,” particularly resonates with me.

Good job, Monster.com and BBDO (the ad agency that pulled it off). By showing us a looser, you’ve made a winner. Now good luck making back in site traffic what you spent in extravagant CGI.

These St. Patrick’s Day radio ads for Finnegans Irish Amber are gut-busting, laugh-to-tears hilarious. A wee bit irreverent? Yes, absolutely. They start out “blessed are those who drink Finnegans,” and then it’s all down hill from there. But if you can make it through the sacrilege and the thick Irish brogue, you’re in for a fun 60 seconds.

Now I’d like to point out that I’m not endorsing this product in anyway. To tell the truth, I don’t even drink. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (more known as the Mormon Church), I live by the Word of Wisdom: a law of health that prohibits consumption of alcohol, coffee, tea and illicit drugs.

But I also recognize as well as anyone that beer (or in this case, ale) commercials are some of the funniest out there. So for me, this is all about the brilliance of the ad’s writing, music and voice talent—not the beverage. In fact, I have a brother that served a mission for our Church in Ireland and he can attest to how true these are to the Irish culture.

That said, onto the ads.

“House”

“Karate”

I’d like to emphasize an interesting strategy behind this concept (besides the fact that “Finnegan’s donates all its profits to charity”). Finnegan’s is actually calling attention to the obvious inebriating effects of their brew; something I’ve never seen in any alcoholic drink’s ads. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest—and in this case, hysterical.

For once, an alcoholic beverage company is willing to own up to what everyone knows in the first place: if you drink enough of the stuff, you’re going to get sloshed. You have to hand it to them for being willing to tackle the issue at all—even if they’re just trying to sell more of it, not warn against its adverse consequences.

And besides, you have to give credit to any ad that can get away with saying “karate potion” or “domicile”—no matter what the context.

By the way, I found these on the 2008 Radio-Mercury Awards Finalists list (the highest award in radio advertising).

This ad aired during the NCAA National Championship Game—just one of a slew of great ads during the event. My buddy said he was actually more impressed with the NCAA’s commercials than this year’s Super Bowl offerings

What makes this ad so funny is the performance by the out-of-touch business exec that wants to “go viral” and “get on the Net” to “blog it out.”

Interestingly, Directv depicts the guy who cares about the blogosphere as a total self-centered dingbat. For a company trying to show off their technologically-advanced prowess, it’s ironic that they’re also subtlety poking fun at the new media—apparently “tweens” are the only ones that care about blogs—that now makes and brakes products and brands. However, considering the fact that I’m writing about their ad and posting it on my blog (free advertising for them), they probably know exactly what they’re doing. Still, they don’t have this posted on YouTube yet. So they’re not totally with it.

There’s a few more ads to this campaign here—though not as funny as this one, in my opinion.