November 30, 2009

For Relaxing Times...Make It Commercial Time

The idea for my class today was to discuss media, commercials, and advertising techniques. To do so, I downloaded a few videos from YouTube to show in class, hoping to start a discussion. That worked moderately well, and that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to talk quickly about celebrities doing commercials in foreign countries. See, I remembered a tea commercial from my time in Germany about 10 years ago. This commercial was weird because it featured nothing but German, and at the end, Sean Connery suddenly appeared and said, "What a tea." Check it out; it's only 10 seconds of strangeness:



"What a tea"? Doesn't he mean "What the hell?" In any case, this is the commercial that led me and my friend Bobby to say "What a tea" for months on end.

That got me thinking, though, about celebrities doing ads in foreign countries, and I remembered the movie "Lost in Translation," where Bill Murray's character goes to Japan to do ads for Suntory Whiskey. Well, it turns out that Suntory Whiskey exists, and "western" celebrities shill for it:


And it's even freaking Sean Connery again! Obviously, this one would have been better if he'd said "Hwhat a whishkey" at the end of it but beggars --especially foreign beggars-- can't be choosers.

While I was out there on the internet, I also came across a few others worth sharing. The next two are for my folks, who I believe could technically fall into the category of "stalkers" when it comes to Harrison Ford fandom:



Sure, a bit weird, but this next one is even stranger:



He seems so happy! And sweaty! I certainly like Happy Harrison Ford, although I certainly realize that Frowny, Stern Harrison Ford is the one who sells movie tickets. Happy Harrison Ford is the one who sells Japanese beer. And I'm cool with that.

Finally, here's one that's just way out there. The guy or girl who posted it on YouTube wrote simply "Words fail to describe this". Truer words have never been spoken (or failed to be spoken, in this case, I suppose). Watch. Learn:


Wow.

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3 comments:

Paul said...

At the 52 second mark of the Suntory commercial, Sean Connery shows a bitter beer face, confusion and disgust all in the matter of 2 seconds. What an actor!

Sitzman said...

Ha ha! True!

Unknown said...

freaky!