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Thursday, February 19, 2009

New Series: FreeCreditReport.com Rankings

You've seen them. You might hate them, but be honest, you probably love them. The FreeCreditReport.com commercials with everybody's favorite singer. (Who is actually lip-synching, and is Canadian) So I decided this would be a good time to evaluate and rank the 6 commercials.

I'm grading each video based on 3 criteria:
1. Music - does it sound good?
2. Lyrical content - Judging lyrical content is a tough job because the basic message of all of the songs is the same. So maybe the more appropriate word would be lyrical creativity. I want to see how they're telling me to go to FreeCreditReport.com.
3. Visual - This category takes into account costumes, scenery, acting and the like.

I'll reveal the videos in order from 6 to 1 over the next week. Without further adieu, your 6th place video: (Not a loser because all of these commercials are winners, this one is just the 6th best)




Music: They're going for a kind of rap/hip hop vibe here, but I'm not buying it. The beat is suspect at best and sounds too much like techno. Also, the guy sounds like a robot with his monotone voice. If you're gonna have a rap song, go all out and really make it sound like rap. Bottom line, this song is just not as catchy as the othes. Grade: 4/10

Lyrical Creativity: The lyrics open pretty strongly. It starts out "When you're a rock star you get to party hard/Champagne and caviar tricked-out exotic cars" That's not a bad verse I don't think. However, later on when we get to the chorus, He's got to ask the DJ "Free what?" This could mean one of two things: Either he forgot what he was advertising, which would be disastrous, or more likely, it's cause he couldn't think of anything cool to say there, so he had to throw it over to the DJ for a second. Somebody who doesn't know music might think this is just a cool back and forth between rapper and dj. Luckily, you all have somebody who really knows music (me) to tell you that this occurred because there was no more creativity left. Grade: 4.5/10

Visual: The theme is that these guys are working at some fancy house party. I pray you tell me why then our star is walking down the huge staircase at the beginning. I can tell you one thing, the kitchen isn't upstairs. And if you look at those champagne glasses, they're full. Which means that either he is slacking off on the job by giving himself a tour of the house, or this scenario is totally unrealistic. Also, when our singer is bringing said champagne glasses to the two ladies, if you look at the dancing couple in the background between :10 and :15 in the video, that white guy is a worse dancer than Albert Brennaman. If you're trying to sell a service, you need to put good dancers in your commercial. They have failed. Grade: 5/10

Overall Grade: 13.5/30

Feel free to agree or disagree on any of the things I've mentioned, or if you feel that I have left some key things out that could affect the grade, please let me know. We'll see you soon with #5!

3 comments:

Rob said...

Nice write up. I must agree with everything you said. I am a bit surprised though with your attention to detail that you failed to notice when he says 'tricked out exotic cars' it's a clip of a cadillac suv, and a corvette. Sure, nice cars, but let's face it, they're domestic. More lies....

maggie said...

chris, thank you for educating me on all the nuances of these fine commercial works of art! i'll never watch tv the same way again...

jennie said...

i agree with this one being last. it's pretty bad. also, the guys all kinda look like slobs to be catering such a nice party. this is going to be a good series.