Dear Subwaynow.com ad,
Okay, you win, I lose. I admit defeat. I tried to ignore you, but you’ve worn down all my defenses. Perhaps I’m too curious by nature, but I have to ask: What the hell are you supposed to be?
What message are you trying to convey?
At first I thought that that weird Chinese dragon thing on the left was some personification of the hunger felt by the man on the right— like “Uh-oh, his stomach is angry, but now with a Subway sandwich, he can defeat the monster!” I guess I got that because the dragon’s tail looks kind of like an intestine, and the dragon has dark hair, like the guy. But if that’s what I’m supposed to get from it, there should be some copy that reinforces that idea, right? Like “Slay the Hunger Beast” or something, right? Right?
Instead, the tagline is “Order Ahead. Skip the lunch line.” So, I guess that thing on the left is a lunch line? But why is it a dragon? Okay, I’ll go with the metaphor and say the lunch line is a dragon, but then why is it only partially a dragon? Why does it have a dude’s head? WHOSE HEAD IS THAT?
And why aren’t they in a Subway restaurant, but in some weird white space? This ad is so ugly and weird I cannot look away. I need to know how many hoops this ad had to jump through, how many executives okayed this idea (the “idea” being, as near is I can tell, “buy our food online so you don’t have to spend any time with the disgusting an terrifying riffraff that frequent our shops”). To me it looks like three different guys had ideas for ads, and the boss was just like, “Ehhhhhh, put ‘em all together.” That, or someone has a nephew who’s really into making gross papier-mache heads, and he was like, “Hey, I’ll give Little Kevin some work, why not?”
This ad looks photoshopped in all the wrong ways. It looks like that guy’s body parts were all photographed separately and then thrown together blindly, like an exquisite corpse drawing. The “NOW” part of the “Subway NOW.” logo looks like someone just put a sticker on the ad. Is that font supposed to look computer-y and high tech? Uh, because I guess it does if you haven’t seen a computer in twenty years.
And so, Subwaynow.com ad, while you have failed in many, many, oh God so many ways, you have succeeded in one very important way. You’ve gotten my attention and now I’m writing in my blog about you, you stupid stupid ad that makes no sense.
Congratulations.
I’m reblogging this because Raphael wouldn’t do it himself. Boring old Raphael!
- adam
