Last year, the NCAA basketball tournament raked in $1.15 billion in ad revenue over 67 games, according to Kantar Media.
What’s even more remarkable is that they seem to have done it by airing and re-airing just six stupid commercials.
As anyone who’s planted themselves on the couch and watched dozens of hours of March Madness knows, slogging through the repetitive ads that seem to pop up after each made basket has become as unpleasant a rite of spring as pollen or rain showers.
With Monday’s national championship game about to begin, the time is right to crown another champion: the NCAA tourney’s most annoying ad.
With much difficulty, a Final Four was selected. Please congratulate your regional champions.
Unfunny Animal Region (Dish Network’s kangaroo)
What does a kangaroo have to do with cable TV? Probably nothing, other than the fact that previous campaigns featuring computer-generated animals have proven popular, such as the Geico gecko.
“Yeah, just do us one of those — only different enough to not get us sued,” you can hear Dish telling its ad agency, pushing back from the table after a pricey expense-account lunch. Burp.
And because, by law, no CG animal is allowed to hit the airwaves without a foreign accent, this kangaroo has got an Aussie twang going on. (Next up, the Slovenian Salamander.) The ad is neither funny nor relevant to its product. And good luck unloading the 2 million kangaroo plush toys the company probably ordered in anticipation of Kanga-fever sweeping America.
Horrific Jingle Region (Subway’s Cruncha Muncha)
Never mind this ad’s cranial-caving song, the entirety of the lyrics seem to be nonsense words strung together. What we can’t wrap our heads around is which image Subway wants to present to viewers.
After spending years trying to convince us that top athletes regularly consume their subs (snicker) as part of a healthy training regimen (guffaw), the ubiquitous chain has now abandoned all health claims, seemingly thrown up its hands up and declared, “Just give the customers whatever crap they want.”
“Um, can you, like, put Fritos on the sandwich?” asked a 6-year-old boy somewhere in America.
“Yes!” Subway responded.
“Can you also cut the bread in the shape of a robot?” the boy said.
“Maybe next quarter.”
Badgering Spokesman Region (Capitol One starring Samuel L. Jackson)
We realize that Jackson is notoriously prickly when it comes to taking direction, but couldn’t someone on the set have manned up enough to give him the gentle note, “Hey, man. You may want to reconsider screaming every line like you’re Nick Fury hanging onto the outside of the Avengers Quinjet during a third-act battle.”
Even the inventor of the credit card wasn’t this excited about it.
Thin Premise Region (Allstate Mayhem guy)
Dean Winters, who plays “Mayhem,” once joked to Ad Age, “I wanted to become an actor so I didn’t have to put on a suit and sell insurance.”
Well, guess what. You’re now wearing a suit and selling insurance. And in truly annoying fashion, which is a shame, because Winters has been pretty entertaining in his non-shill work, including playing Tina Fey’s loser boyfriend on “30 Rock.”
It’s also kind of irksome that the company has cutely tried to blame all mishaps in the world on some random chaotic force when in reality, most destruction stems from one place: Justin Bieber.
And the overall champion is . . . Subway. Thanks for playing, everyone. See you next year.