You've Got Annoyingly Bad Commercials
from the thank-you! dept
I don't watch much TV, but I keep seeing the two incredibly annoying AOL commercials that I couldn't believe anyone in their right mind would think to make. Now, Seth Stevenson over at Slate has written up exactly the reasons why the commercials are dreadful. The first one, with the mother asking for a bunch of not particularly exciting features is simply annoying, and all it really does is show that AOL has done a dreadful job telling their own users what features they get. The second, however, is just dreadful. It shows every AOL customer showing up at the headquarters to give suggestions. The message is supposed to be "AOL listens to its customers," but what I (and apparently Seth) got was "every one of AOL's customers has problems with the service and wants to complain." Not exactly a strong selling point.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Bad yes.. but it could be worse
Maybe I'm numb to AOL but they haven't learned how to sale their product ... whatever that product is.
The animation they used of the little two dimension featureless figure was worse. I kept thinking it was a wal-mart commercial with their yellow round face 'roll back' guy.
AOLs basic problem is one of two things. 1) they don't know what they are offering or 2) they have nothing to offer.
I'm leaning toward #2. The worlds moved on and they haven't.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Bad yes.. but it could be worse
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They aren't alone...
Besides being pure Orwellian nonsense, the ad comes across to me as saying Comcast puts a gun to the heads of their employees and makes them read a prepared statement.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gotta have programming
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
customer input
I loved AOL 1.0 when it first came out, because it meant there was finally a way for my friends and family to begin to see some of the potential of a networked world. Then AOL let them out to play on the Internet. USENET R.I.P.
Anyway, years later and now I'm in a standard cubical-dwelling corporate IT job. I could design and build wonderful process-enabling 4GL systems if I could just keep my end users from insisting on some of the more egregiously stupid "requirements." And AOL thinks that listening to the unwashed masses is a selling point? I'm genuinely amused.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
annoying commercials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
annoying commercials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
commercials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]