The Death of Advertising Will Eat Your Soul
I would like to say “sorry” about saying “I told you so,” but I was right about the death of advertising. Behold the soul-devouring lifeless corpse of Orville Redenbacher re-computer-animated to hock popcorn. Crispin + Porter proves once again that working at a successful agency does not magically turn phenomenally bad ideas good. This was the single most disgusting thing I have ever witnessed on television. The YouTube video may hide some of the evil with its low-resolution, but if you should encounter the evil, soul-eating, reanimated Redenbacher-corpse on an HDTV, look away, lest the death take you down with it.
January 21st, 2007 at 9:54 am
Oh… my… god!
Not living in the US I don’t have a clue who Orville Redenbacher is, but this stiff and lifeless animated creature without a soul that looks like the puppeteer wasn’t able to unknot the strings is genuinely creeping me out. I never want to see that in HD please.
January 21st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I saw this on TV last night, and it haunted my dreams. Not cool. Not cool at all.
January 21st, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Yeah, when I saw that ad I was definitely creaped out. The whole appeal of Orville was that he was like this friendly old grandpa type. Now he is back from the dead as some guy that wants you to think he is your grandpa. The iPod thing? Just scary. Terrible.
However, I am not getting the connection betweeen this bad ad and your proclamation that advertising is dead. Not that I don’t agree with that premise, I just don’t see the connection. It could be argued that the viral buzz about this ad proves that advertising IS still relevant.
It should also be noted that this isn’t the first dead celebrity to be brought back to life to plug a product. Einstein, Gene Kelly, Hendrix come to mind. Is there a “right” way to do this or is it all wrong?
January 21st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
It’s always wrong, Adrian. The Gap exploiting Audry Hupburn also drove me insane. But this is more about that link I dropped above about the Uncanny Valley, and how this comes close enough to approximating a real human being without getting the details right to terrify us to the core of our beings.
In a press release I read touting the “cutting edge technologies” used in the ad, Orville is compared to Gollum. In a good way. I find that hilariously ironic, since Gollum was designed to haunt my dreams, and yet Orville here is doing a much better job of it.
January 21st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
This just turned me off. Way off. Like the smell of burned popcorn.
Yuck!
VR/
January 21st, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I’ve seen this commercial also,not just creepy but just plain…..WEIRD!
When I first saw this I asked “isn’t this guy DEAD?”
I thought it was an actor but apparently it was CGI.
However not the first time a dead actor was reanimated as a live person.
Remember, Service Merchandise spliced old footage of old tv characters (from shows such as I Love Lucy,Dragnet,and the Munsters) in their black & white colors into color footage depicting them as “customers” in their stores.
However this is different,instead of taking old footage and splicing it they completely took a complete CGI model of a dead person and make them look ‘alive’ which is just plain…..weird.
Hopefully this horrible recreation of Redenbacher will discourage any further reanimating of dead people.
Plus, the guys a stiff,he hardly moves.
January 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Orville Redenbacher re-computer-animated to hock popcorn is the death of advertising? As long as there are two snake oil salesmen left there will always be a need for one to identify their product from the other and boast that their oil is better! There also will be some guy who thinks he can make an image of the snake that is more beguiling than the devil himself and produce a logo to prove it! One of the snake oil salesmen will see if the artist’s work makes a difference in sales and forever the three of them will wonder if it is the snake oil or the artwork that moves the product.
Nate, you seem to hold some strange thoughts about souls, death and images. But religion aside ‚Ķ I like the commercial! I do not fear the capture of the old guy’s soul via technology, nor do I find it offensive to create a likeness of a dead person and have him hawk his product.
Adrain shares, “It should also be noted that this isn’t the first dead celebrity to be brought back to life to plug a product. Einstein, Gene Kelly, Hendrix come to mind. Is there a “right‚Äù way to do this or is it all wrong?
I would say there is a right way. Orville in life became a spokesman for his product and the company values his personage enough to keep it as a “persona‚Äù. With the technology today a life-like image can be created, while this one visually is not going to fool the viewer into thinking that Orville is back, it carries on the persona of the old man that Orville played when alive. While not being super realistic it achieves a balance that does not try to deceive the viewer. The right way to use a dead celebrity in my opinion is to stay with their views, as this does, or make it obvious you are playing against type. It would only be wrong if you tried to make the public believe you have the person’s endorsement of some thing they would not endorse. Or do not get permission and /or pay for the use of the image. I find the commercial entertaining as it has the humor of holding up the MP3 almost like a terrorist might hold up the current issue of a paper to prove their hostage is currently alive!
By the way, Orville played Orville! He created a character of Orville… just perfect type casting!
January 21st, 2007 at 9:20 pm
For what it’s worth(ha!), I still hold that the problem here is that it’s bad. It doesn’t even particularly look or sound like him, and they could’ve spent a lot less money with better results hiring an actor and good makeup person. This looks so off it doesn’t even fall into the valley for me because it just makes me think of the Six Flags guy or White Chicks.
With the at least partially-failed exception of the Matrix’s Brawly Brawl, the best CG studios, spending years on movies haven’t even tried to foist a human on us yet(Not just humanoid, like the Final Fantasy movie, and most not even that.) because they know the technology still isn’t nearly up to it, and I can’t see how these people thought they’d pull it off.
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:10 am
I think you are all missing the point. Crispin + Porter seems to be a big believer in the axiom, “there is no such thing as bad press”. They didn’t think they would get away with anything, and they knew it would cause an uproar. We are all falling into their hands, and exponentially increasing their budget dollars. We are all pawns in their little buzz game.
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 am
That was a fascinating read about the Uncanny Valley, thanks for that!
Thanks to the powers of the internet, it’s already been made into a creepy GIF:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y4/Jadetigerffxi/OrvilleDance.gif
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
Two from Ad Age. ‘Deadenbacher’ Creeps Consumers but Drives Massive Traffic and Return of the Popcorn-Shilling Zombie
VR/
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
CGI? Remember in biology when you hooked up a battery to frog legs and they twiched. Or was that just me. Creepy.
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Guess what? I sent the YouTube video above to four people at work. Two of them knew Orville was dead.
VR/