One upmanship, and the lucky number 13

You may not have though it possible, or at least not likely, but someone has topped TipTipCash.com for repetition in a :60 radio spot.

While Twisted Tea doesn't actually mention their brand name quite as many times, they manage to say the word "tea" 13 times in a mere 60 seconds. That's roughly every four and a half seconds.

But how? With approved phrasing like, "Twisted tea. It's the hard iced tea that tastes like real ice tea." Evidently top quality writing is a common characteristic in ads that repeat things too much. I just KNOW they're going to set themselves apart with groundbreaking lines like, "Try Twisted Tea, it's really refreshing."

And practically comical on top of this is the fact that a brand that looks like a slightly funkier version of Snapple is trying hard to sell an iced-tea flavored alcoholic drink to young men.

The moral
I have two suggestions. First, not a lot of 18-24 males drink iced tea or want anything that tastes like it. Second, you're definitely not going to sell it to them with the voice of a chiding middle-aged woman saying, "My husband calls it his MAN-tea." Man-tea language could help you, but not if the person saying it is making fun of her man for doing it.

9th time's a charm

Getting people to remember your company's name is great, as long as you don't say it so many times they hate you. That's precisely the case with TopTopCash.com, who injects the company name into their :60 radio spot an average of once every seven seconds.

The spot starts out bland and predictable, but bearable and the whole thing sounds like it was written to be :30 long. Just past the halfway point, it becomes obvious that one of two things, or both, happened.

First, someone clearly ran out of things to say. The entire second half of the spot merely repeats the same talking points over and over in a random and non-sensical order.

Second, it seems that someone decided the best way to fill that space was by repeating the company's name as many times as possible. More than half the mentions of the company name are in the last 15 or so seconds with revolutionary writing like, "Again, that's TipTopCash.com."

The commercial is so grading that I actually change the station when it comes on, and it's practically the only reason I ever change my radio station.

The moral
It doesn't matter how well people remember your name if they hate you, and though the guy who stands on a corner yelling his own name over and over will be known to all, he will be friend to none.

Don't talk about things you don't now about

I'm going to skip the whole part where I talk about how little I like most of McDonald's advertising. I believe that even with the best creatives in the world on the task, the executives at McD's would continue to demand the unbelievably optimistic and contrived spots they currently produce, but the McCafe spots are by far some of the worst offenders in my book. Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting concept- transforming something bland into something cool with use of the accent mark. However, the examples they offer up tend to fall flat. But the radio is what gets me the most.

In one radio spot, the announcer is talking about how McCafe can jazz up your life and cause you to spurt out "evocative sentence fragments like 'That's chill dog.' " First of all, "That's chill dog" is hardly evocative. Second, and more important to grammar hounds, "That's chill dog." is a complete sentence. It has a subject and verb, not to mention an indirect object and an adverb. The sentence makes sense and stands on it's own. IT'S NOT A FRAGMENT. All I'm sayin' is if you're going to thrown around grammatical terms on the radio, at least know what you're talking about.

Crickets don't know fast from reliable

Listening to a radio spot by local cell carrier Cricket Wireless recently, I was reminded of how easy it is to pull a bait and switch if you do it quickly and confidently enough. In the spot, two characters are talking in a pretty classic problem/solution format. It's a pretty fast spot, so if you're paying attention, you'll completely miss them dodging a major cell issue.

The guy who's looking for a good cell carrier is listing things he wants from a carrier, and the solution guy is naming all of Cricket's relevant benefits. Carrier seeking guy say, "I want a reliable network." Solution guy replies, "Cricket has a 3G network."

The problem is, of course, that 3G addresses the speed of the network, not the reliability. You can ask just about anyone with an iPhone 3G in a major urban area exactly how "reliable" 3G really is. Who needs service in places like downtown Houston or the central business district in Chicago? 3G has to do primarily with the speed of the network in regards to downloading data like songs or streaming video.

So, props to Cricket for pulling a fast one. Answer a question with a technical term that not everyone understands and you get to substitute speed for reliability. I wish all product benefit shell games were that easy.