MasterTrash

OK, I never do this.

I will trash this silly industry of ours. Mostly because there's so much to trash, including: open office space plans, wage disparity, strategic clusterfucks, failed processes, the Long Table of Mediocrity™, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

But I go out of my way not to target individual pieces of work.

I think it's been more than a year since I did a hit piece on that god awful Beneful spot. With the dog that talks. The dog that talks while chewing his food and gushes over the chicken and blueberries and pumpkin and spinach. Yum.

I don't go on about work that sucks because my shit stinks as bad as the next guy's. In fact, I've gone out of my way to post embarrassing work from my past on this very site. Mostly for its therapeutic value.

However, I can't let this MasterCard MasterPass spot featuring Kat Denning and Joe Montana, pass.

Mostly because it is guilty of two sins. It is played during every broadcast of every football game, including the replays on the NFL channel. I can't escape this abomination. And make no mistake, it is an abomination -- its original cardinal sin.



As you might have guessed I've watched this over and over again.

For the life of me, I still don't know what the hell is going on. I know it's a MasterPass commercial because they crammed the name into the spot about 17 times. A masterful feat considering the spot is only 30 seconds long. Other than that, the spot defies all the classic narrative story lines.

It's not man versus nature.

It's not man versus man.

It's not even man versus himself.

It's man versus cheap oblong-shaped ceramic pottery. I must have missed that one in English Lit 101.

I feel bad. Not only for the young team who are no doubt extremely proud of this work and peacocking it around on their social media pages. But I feel worse for the other teams at the agency, who probably put some good work, or at least work that made sense, on the table, only to have it rejected in favor of this colossal mess.

And to them, I can only offer this sage advice: leave your TVs off until after the Super Bowl.