Reflect your passion

I rarely do this.

I rarely write about topics that have been covered, and covered eloquently I might add, by other bloggers. With the exception of stealing liberally from George Tannenbaum, Bob Hoffman and the brilliant Dave Trott across the pond.

But last week Pam Fujimoto, writing for June Cleaver is Dead,  noticed what many of you might have noticed. An abortion of a spot for Meguiar's Car Wax that is currently airing during the NBA Finals.

You can read her piece here. And see the spot here.

The truth is, I was going to write about this as well, Pam just beat me to the punch.

I was going to throw shade on this commercial because it is so noticeably lacking in craft.

The premise is terrible.
The production is terrible.
The casting is terrible.
The editing is terrible.
The direction is terrible.

Mercifully, they crammed all this terrible into a 15 second spot and chose not to torture us for the other 15. (Clearly, that ad space was sold to the makers of Transitions Lens'. That fucking ear worm music is lodged in my head and probably won't leave until they hand the NBA Championship trophy to the warriors, again.)

I also have a personal interest on this as well.

You see I have a little history with the good folks at Meguiar's. Mind you this was from way back in 2004. Somehow, through any one of a million connections or thru sheer hustle, my partner and I wrangled a meeting with Meguiar's.

We put on the crispest khaki pants and the most gentile button down shirts in our closets and ventured south of the Orange Curtain. They seemed impressed with our credentials, our experience and our grown-up approach to advertising. They even signed us on for a project.

The presentation of the work two weeks later did not go as well. How did Jean Robaire put it? Oh yeah, "they looked at us like the family looked at Woody Allen in the movie, Annie Hall." 

We still got paid, so no harm, no foul.

Just out of curiosity I did a little research on the agency that is currently doing their "creative" work. It's a tiny little digital shop in Wisconsin.

Malcolm Gladwell famously said you need to put 10, 000 hours before you can claim expertise in any particular area.

And just to put things in perspective, in 2004 when Jean and I were presenting professional work to the marketing department at Meguiars, most of the employees at this unnamed digital agency in Wisconsin did not have 10, 000 hours invested in any particular craft.

In fact, most of them had not yet entered the 9th grade.