attgig

does anyone actually like this commercial???

can't stand it.... can't stand it at all.

__________________

chrissy

are they really hamsters?

They looked like stuffed rats!
It's scary to think that a dead rat/hamster is the new spokes"thing" for a restaurant.

:yukky shiver smilie here:

psycho-

__________________
Victor

attgig

yeah....having rodents in a restaurant commercial can't be good.

Lolita

I love those guys, but then again I was a fan of rathergood.com for a while now. The moon song cracks me up everytime

__________________
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Bires

Is THAT what they are? Man...I HATE that commercial. I better use for the mute I've not found.

__________________
Five years...

baggio248

They freak me out, I think they look like furry Mr Hankys'

__________________
Peter: Lois, you've got a sick mind!
Lois: Peter, I'm talking about making love.
Peter: Oh, I thought you wanted us to murder the children and harvest their organs for beer money.

ski

I think they remain better as an Internet cult favorite... I think something like Homestar Runner on TV just wouldn't be the same experience

__________________
And closer...

sizemic1

They have an office suite across from mine. I'll go over there this week and get to bottom of that commercial!

__________________
[___]
(O lllllll O)
[]==O=[]

attgig

while you're there, ask for some coupons for causing you distress with their commercials, and share them with us =)

slaus

I kind of like the commercial...

Jeffbx

The subs are good

The commercial is creepy

mcs328

yeah...I was like wtf is that?

__________________

Jihforce

Those things are scary. Their subs are alright, but they are kinda expensive. Last time I went there it costs like nearly 8 dollars for a medium sized sub and a drink/chips.

__________________
Auto Leasing Info @ RIDEwithG.com | My Food & Travel Blog

Butch

Article from Advertising Age about the commercial . . . they like it . . .

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39754

DEAD VERMIN SELL QUIZNOS SANDWICHES
And Both Spots Break Through the Clutter as Few Ads Do
February 09, 2004
QwikFIND ID: AAP36E

By Bob Garfield
Client: Quiznos
Agency: Martin Agency, Richmond, Va.
Star Rating: 3.5
If you pick the Yankees to return to the World Series, and they do, nobody will ever remember. But if you pick the Tigers ...
Singing rodents sell sandwiches in the latest Quiznos commercials.

Well, we've just seen the new Quiznos campaign from the Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., and all we can say is, "Go Tigers."

Dead vermin
This is a pair of commercials for a hot-sub chain -- i.e., merchants selling food -- that features two withered mice as spokesmen. Actually, they look more like animated mouse carcasses. There's one mouse carcass with a bowler hat, one with an 18th-century commodore's hat, and between them two mouthfuls of maloccluded human teeth and four bulging, mismatched eyeballs. Think Mr. Potato Head, only with vermin.

Stop-action animated dead vermin. To sell sandwiches.

And they're going to work.

That is correct: going to work. In fact, as we shall attempt forthwith to prove, they constitute good advertising.

Now we fully understand that the most recent Quiznos advertising, under the previous agency, we deplored as unappetizing, self-destructive and fundamentally unhinged. We couldn't understand how pictures of a man sucking on a wolf's teat were going to sell grinders to teenagers. We represented that commercial pretty much as the apotheosis of irrelevance and agency self-indulgence. And we were not wrong.

Something of a leap
So, yes, we appreciate that championing the shriveled-rodent approach is something of leap. But we are not daunted.

Because the mice also perform. The Commodore plays the guitar and the other screeches/sings, like something out of "Grover Visits the Sesame Street Department of Health."

We love the subs! Because they are good to us.
The Quiznos subs.
They are tasty. They are crunchy. They are warm because they toast them.
They got a pepper bar.

Then, underneath fetching close-ups of the hot sandwiches, a voice-over describes the new menu items. Then one final glimpse of the singing spokespest and it's over.

OK, why this will work: First, the images and, uh, music, do jump out at you. Maybe like a skeleton in a Halloween Spook House, but jump they undeniably do. From the first frame, these ads break through the clutter as few ads ever have.

Jingle says a lot
Secondly, note the jingle: It's not only catchy, in a perverse please-make-it-stop sort of way, it's also a clear iteration of the product benefits. They are tasty. They are crunchy. They are warm because they toast them. Says a lot more than "I'm lovin' it," does it not?

Finally, this stuff is so weird, unexpected and reckless that it's just plain cool. At least, it will be deemed as cool by the 14- to 24-year-old boys and men who represent 116% of Quiznos audience.

Disturbing associations?
Will it implant disturbing associations about, say, mouse droppings in a food establishment? Maybe. Some percentage of the audience may be too grossed out to even deal with the more disgusting extensions of the campaign's internal logic. Bad enough we have to think about mad-cow disease without worrying about hantavirus, too.

But we don't believe many will take this exercise in absurdity so literally. We believe, on the contrary, that it will make the target talk and think about Quiznos.

Yeah, go Tigers. And go, mice.

__________________
I used to be into sadism, necrophilia and beastiality, but then I realized I was just beating a dead horse

Merlin

Well if Advertising Age likes then it must not suck... The spot is quite simply retarted and will not entice me to buy more there. I've yet to hear of anyone with a positive response to the spots. The only good thing for them is that it did indeed get us all talking about them and there is some ad value in that.

__________________

Cubsfan

I actually like the ad, but it's not going to make me buy subs. Of course, I don't think any other ad campaign has made me buy subs either (no, I don't this that Jared's going to make me go to Subway).

zenbooty

Which is precisely what they're going for. How many people have even heard of Quizno's before this ad campaign? Ads don't sell product by convincing the audience to buy. Ads sell product by getting the name out there in such a way that people don't forget it. People won't buy products they don't know exist, right? So if an ad gets the brand name into peoples' heads, that's good enough for the ad to be effective in almost all cases.

I like the ads personally. But I've been a fan of www.rathergood.com for a long time now.

__________________
Common sense is what tells you the Earth is flat.

attgig

Finally, this stuff is so weird, unexpected and reckless that it's just plain cool. At least, it will be deemed as cool by the 14- to 24-year-old boys and men who represent 116% of Quiznos audience.



i'm in that age group and i hate it.

Jeffbx

OK, I'm no mathematician, but how can one segment of your customers add up to 116%?

Butch

Exactly. As the article says, the ads "break through the clutter," which is basically just an advertising buzz phrase meaning that they stand out . . . in any way . . . but they stand out and get noticed.

Really, that's what it's all about for the moment. Lots of people will like the commercial . . . lots of people won't . . . but at least they noticed it. A year from now, nobody will remember the specific commercial, but there's a decent chance they'll remember Quizno's when they're long on to their next campaign.

Merlin

I'm glad someone asked that as I have no clue either. I just kind of chalked it up to a marketers attempt at numbers.

Butch

I think it was just a joke . . . a means of emphasizing that Quizno's shouldn't really care at all about what people outside of that demographic think about the commercials.

Jeffbx

Well, you gotta admit that they got people talking about it.

Chinpoko_Mon

Well, Kevin & Bean on KROQ (L.A. based radio station) interviewed the marketing genius who came up with this campaign.

According to him, those are suppose to be monkeys... yes.. monkeys... not hamsters, not any kind of rodent.. MONKEYS.....

Some brazilian or spanish monkey or something weird like that...

bizarre...

Merlin

Monkeys you say? Well, that changes everything.



Viva le Monkey.

Freelance Superhero

haha, i passed up this thread before because the subject line didn't interest me, but i just saw the commercial for the first time, and i was trippin.

i was channel surfing so i only caught the last 2 seconds of it, but imagine my surprise when i see the Spongmonkeys from rathergood.com in a quizno's commercial!!

for the record, i freakin love that moon song, so i'm looking forward to the next time i can see the ad in its entirety.

__________________
"I can't believe you can eat that; it looks like abortion." - Augusta, of the Tard-Blog