My current pet peeve: Those now-annoying Dunkin Donuts commercials. OK, it was kinda cool at first the way they created these indie-band sounding jingles for their commercials that used the inanities of everyday life as lyrics for the song. My personal favorite was the soccer mom who had to drive her kids to “ballet, oboe…and don’t forget… KARATEEEEEEEEEEE!!!… YA!” Supid? Yeah, but hey, it’s a freakin’ TV commercial. Whaddya want?
But in the latest one they just flat-out lie and I can’t get past it no matter how many times they run it. You’ve probably seen it, the one with the people waiting in line for coffee at the supposed-to-be-Starbucks-but-not-really shop, scratching their heads at the confusing product names on the menu and trying to determine how they’re supposed to order their overpriced drinks since all of the names are in French or Italian. “Mocha, chino, grande frappe, avec moi,” they sing (sort of) as they complain about the fact that ordering in a foreign language sucks. “My mouth can’t say these words/is it French/or is it Italian?/Perhaps Fre-talian”
The kicker comes when some “smart” dude who had the intelligence, foresight and no-nonsense attitude to go to Dunkin Donuts cruises past the window, happily sipping on his tasty beverage while the lemmings inside the fancy coffee shop stand in line like sheep to slaughter. Then the voice over announcer intones:
“Dunkin Donut Lattes… you order them in English…”
OK, if I’m not mistaken, latte comes from the phrase “café latte” which is an ITALIAN phrase indicating coffee with a lot of milk in it. So other than the words “Dunkin” and “Donuts”, there is nothing “English” about it… and I’m not too sure about “Dunkin”.
I’m sorry, but when you’re trying hard to be hipper-than-thou, at least get your shit together and know the difference between English and Italian.
That would be the No. 1 thing that disturbed me today, but while looking for the Dunkin Donuts website I ran across this little bit of web flotsom that knocked me for a little loop... Fucking Dunkin Donuts has a fucking blog! A blog with the simplisticly ridiculous name of "Dunkin Donut Talk", with small news items about Dunkin Donuts, recipies utilizing Dunkin Donuts products, comments from people about Dunkin Donuts products and advertising, etc. What the fuck?...
I'm pretty sure it's sponsored and maintained by Dunkin Donuts themselves - some web geek sitting in a back room slurping down all the free coffee and powdered donuts he wants - but they go out of their way to make it as "blog-y" looking as possible. And while it's pretty obvious that this is some corporate attempt at tapping into web culture, and slip in some free advertising as well, the strange part is that people are actually coming to the site and leaving comments. Who can care that much about donuts?
1 comment:
I'll admit, I loved those "Perhaps Fre-talian" commercials when they first aired--but the contradiction of "Dunkin Donuts Latte" didn't occur to me. Maybe because I love the good ol' fashioned regular Dunkin' Donuts coffee, always have--I don't need no steekin' latte and would never order one from DD. The Blog thing is sad tho. Jeez.
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