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American Morning
Stupid TV Tricks
Aired October 24, 2003 - 07:44 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Every so often, senior analyst Jeff Greenfield travels through the treacherous world of television commercials, searching for a particular type of ad -- the kind that portray prospective customers as morons. And he's back with a new haul this morning
Hey -- Jeff. Good morning.
JEFFREY GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Good morning.
And, yes, Soledad in all modesty, I do think we may have hit the mother lode with this crop. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: For years, Roy was afraid of home loans.
GREENFIELD (voice-over): Now, in this ad, Washington Mutual shows how its easy home loan process has made its customer utterly fearless. In other words, take a loan out from these guys and you will very likely be tempted to kill yourself. Maybe their bean counters need a better risk-assessment plan.
Now, here's an ad for Hot Wire. They offer stuff cheap online. Dad is teaching his kid how to swim, when:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look dad, a quarter!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over there.
GREENFIELD: Ah, there's a clever sales pitch. If you're greedy enough to risk your child's life for a quarter, we're your kind of company.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OK, but for sheer jaw-dropping, what the heck were they thinking? Try this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow! Somebody's letting go today.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's OK. I had Subway for lunch. GREENFIELD (voice-over): This man's wife tells him it's OK for her to gorge on ice cream, because she's eaten one of those low-fat sandwiches for lunch. Aha, he thinks. And when she comes outside later:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's OK. I had Subway.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: OK, let's figure this out. Now, look, the universe of people who probably like the idea of gorging on chocolate ice cream is probably pretty big, although if weight loss is the key, it might be self-defeating. But how many guys would really be tempted by the notion of dressing up in a girl's cheerleading outfit and washing the car in public? Maybe the folks who dreamed up this one need to move to a new neighborhood.
O'BRIEN: Yes, that -- you know, some of these ads, and you watch them all, but...
GREENFIELD: What can I tell?
O'BRIEN: You think -- someone paid a lot of money to have this ad made.
GREENFIELD: I know.
O'BRIEN: Since we have you, let's turn nasty, a couple of quick questions.
First, a bad week for the president. You look what happened in the House, and, of course, they voted in favor of making a loan, not a grant, outright to Iraq on the $20 billion that was approved, and also the Senate going against the wishes of the White House as well. These restrictions on American who want to travel to Cuba, those have now been relaxed. Give me an assessment of that.
GREENFIELD: Well, yes, I think that loan thing, which I think the Senate put in, may get knocked out in conference. But the Cuba ban is interesting. What this is really about, unsurprisingly, is money. There are a number of farm belt senators, very conservative senators, who also want their constituents to be able to sell their products pretty much wherever they want.
So, in this vote, which was technically a vote to not give the enforcement money to the executive branch, you had people like Sam Brown of Kansas and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. These are as conservative as you can get -- Pat Roberts of Kansas. But their constituents are farmers, a lot of them.
And what this does is put the president in an interesting box. On the one hand, these are his people. They, you know, voted very heavily Republican in most presidential campaigns. But you've got the Cuban exile community in Florida. You remember Florida? A fair number of electoral votes, it tends to be close.
O'BRIEN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) travel back to Cuba?
GREENFIELD: While that community isn't united, most of its leaders still want that travel ban, if anything, tightened. And the president says he's going to veto this, even though it's part of a spending bill.
This reminds me of the grain embargo, when otherwise very conservative congressmen and senators back in the '80s said -- or '70s, we want to be able to sell this stuff to the Soviet Union no matter how evil the empire is. So...
O'BRIEN: A little bit between a rock and a hard place kind of issue.
GREENFIELD: Well, Iraq's a different issue, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: You know what I mean.
GREENFIELD: Yes, I do.
O'BRIEN: You've got a bunch of one-liners this morning.
GREENFIELD: I know.
O'BRIEN: I tell you, we can't stop you.
GREENFIELD: I'm just trying to get over the Yankees. But I know the rest of the country is happy.
O'BRIEN: You know what? They're going to rally. I've got $2 on this with Hemmer, so I'm confident they're going to rally.
GREENFIELD: Well, speaking of direct ad campaign pitches, anybody has tickets to game 6 and can't get rid of them? Right here. Right here.
O'BRIEN: Yes, I'm sure they'll be a lot of people phoning in with that.
GREENFIELD: Yes.
O'BRIEN: Jeff, thank you as always.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired October 24, 2003 - 07:44 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Every so often, senior analyst Jeff Greenfield travels through the treacherous world of television commercials, searching for a particular type of ad -- the kind that portray prospective customers as morons. And he's back with a new haul this morning
Hey -- Jeff. Good morning.
JEFFREY GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Good morning.
And, yes, Soledad in all modesty, I do think we may have hit the mother lode with this crop. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: For years, Roy was afraid of home loans.
GREENFIELD (voice-over): Now, in this ad, Washington Mutual shows how its easy home loan process has made its customer utterly fearless. In other words, take a loan out from these guys and you will very likely be tempted to kill yourself. Maybe their bean counters need a better risk-assessment plan.
Now, here's an ad for Hot Wire. They offer stuff cheap online. Dad is teaching his kid how to swim, when:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look dad, a quarter!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over there.
GREENFIELD: Ah, there's a clever sales pitch. If you're greedy enough to risk your child's life for a quarter, we're your kind of company.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OK, but for sheer jaw-dropping, what the heck were they thinking? Try this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow! Somebody's letting go today.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's OK. I had Subway for lunch. GREENFIELD (voice-over): This man's wife tells him it's OK for her to gorge on ice cream, because she's eaten one of those low-fat sandwiches for lunch. Aha, he thinks. And when she comes outside later:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's OK. I had Subway.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: OK, let's figure this out. Now, look, the universe of people who probably like the idea of gorging on chocolate ice cream is probably pretty big, although if weight loss is the key, it might be self-defeating. But how many guys would really be tempted by the notion of dressing up in a girl's cheerleading outfit and washing the car in public? Maybe the folks who dreamed up this one need to move to a new neighborhood.
O'BRIEN: Yes, that -- you know, some of these ads, and you watch them all, but...
GREENFIELD: What can I tell?
O'BRIEN: You think -- someone paid a lot of money to have this ad made.
GREENFIELD: I know.
O'BRIEN: Since we have you, let's turn nasty, a couple of quick questions.
First, a bad week for the president. You look what happened in the House, and, of course, they voted in favor of making a loan, not a grant, outright to Iraq on the $20 billion that was approved, and also the Senate going against the wishes of the White House as well. These restrictions on American who want to travel to Cuba, those have now been relaxed. Give me an assessment of that.
GREENFIELD: Well, yes, I think that loan thing, which I think the Senate put in, may get knocked out in conference. But the Cuba ban is interesting. What this is really about, unsurprisingly, is money. There are a number of farm belt senators, very conservative senators, who also want their constituents to be able to sell their products pretty much wherever they want.
So, in this vote, which was technically a vote to not give the enforcement money to the executive branch, you had people like Sam Brown of Kansas and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. These are as conservative as you can get -- Pat Roberts of Kansas. But their constituents are farmers, a lot of them.
And what this does is put the president in an interesting box. On the one hand, these are his people. They, you know, voted very heavily Republican in most presidential campaigns. But you've got the Cuban exile community in Florida. You remember Florida? A fair number of electoral votes, it tends to be close.
O'BRIEN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) travel back to Cuba?
GREENFIELD: While that community isn't united, most of its leaders still want that travel ban, if anything, tightened. And the president says he's going to veto this, even though it's part of a spending bill.
This reminds me of the grain embargo, when otherwise very conservative congressmen and senators back in the '80s said -- or '70s, we want to be able to sell this stuff to the Soviet Union no matter how evil the empire is. So...
O'BRIEN: A little bit between a rock and a hard place kind of issue.
GREENFIELD: Well, Iraq's a different issue, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: You know what I mean.
GREENFIELD: Yes, I do.
O'BRIEN: You've got a bunch of one-liners this morning.
GREENFIELD: I know.
O'BRIEN: I tell you, we can't stop you.
GREENFIELD: I'm just trying to get over the Yankees. But I know the rest of the country is happy.
O'BRIEN: You know what? They're going to rally. I've got $2 on this with Hemmer, so I'm confident they're going to rally.
GREENFIELD: Well, speaking of direct ad campaign pitches, anybody has tickets to game 6 and can't get rid of them? Right here. Right here.
O'BRIEN: Yes, I'm sure they'll be a lot of people phoning in with that.
GREENFIELD: Yes.
O'BRIEN: Jeff, thank you as always.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
