Once upon a time, I was minding my own business, watching Justin Bieber in concert on Fuse (no one's shocked), when a commercial the likes of which have never been seen graced my Vizio screen. It begins with someone we are all well acquainted with, staring straight into the camera and tentatively stating "I think it's on," while pretending to adjust it.
Do you want to know who this person is?
In 800 million years you will never guess. Unless you have seen the title of this post. Then you might guess.
Are you ready for this?
It's OCTOMOM. The one and only Nadya Suleman. In a commercial.
Just wait. It gets better.
Octomom proceeds to introduce herself ("you may know me as Octomom," she quips...no one knows you as anything else, Octo.) and sympathize with us that she knows how difficult it can be to take care of a lot of kids, especially when unexpected things happen that you have to pay for. (SIGH. SO TRUE, OCTOMOM, SO TRUE.)
But guys, don't even worry for a second. Why? Are you sitting down?
Because now there is OCTOLOAN.COM.
Yep. That is a real live thing. Not only does Octomom endorse a loan company, but it is named after her.
To prove it, I will post the commercial below, which, by the way, has a losing record of 127 dislikes and 6 likes on YouTube, and also has comments disabled. Again, no one's shocked.
So without further ado, I present to you, Octoloan.com:
As I usually do, I have several questions and/or concerns about this commercial (only a few of which I have outlined below).
1. Really? Octomom? That's who this group thinks is a good person to emulate?
Yes, people will see Octomom, empathize with her and say, "Yes, Octomom, my life is hard! You really understand me!" and then ask for a loan from this previously unknown source named after Octomom. It's brilliant! Brilliant, I say! [perhaps even insert a maniacal laugh here, which would be appropriate considering this whole endeavor is clearly a sinister plot to torture the American TV-watching public.]
Octomom is not even famous anymore. Her 15 minutes were up as soon as those babies turned one week old. Get someone else and rename your loan service. How hard is it to just name it something like "Bad-Decision-Loan.com" and leave it at that?
2. The fine print says that Octomom has never utilized these services and is solely serving as a spokesperson. Even though she literally says "Take it from someone who's been there." I'm not sure what their angle is. Who are they marketing to? This commercial ran on Fuse, which is a music channel. During a Justin Bieber concert. Do they think other fellow septomoms and sextomoms are just sitting around watching Justin Bieber? No. They are chasing multiple children around the house because they realize they have multiple children running around the house. They aren't making commercials about loan services with terrible names, either.
This commercial makes Ken Nugent look credible.
3. The voice. Oh, the voice. It kind of sounds like Janice from Friends if she had grown up in the midwest and gotten lip injections in an attempt to look like Angelina Jolie. Again I ask, why do you want Octomom to be your spokesperson? By virtue of the name itself, said person has to speak. Which involves voices.
Do you see where I'm going with this, random lawyers with terrible marketing strategies? Do you see how ridiculous this is? Yes...that feeling starting to well up inside you is called regret. Embrace it, cry about it for a minute, then shut this down. No good can come from it.
What's your least favorite commercial?