Does the Toyota "Less Than Zero" Commercial Irk You?

I am always bummed when they take songs that I love and use them for commercials. I guess some of the lesser know bands can use the money. Let’s be honest who can blame them. I just miss the days of musical integrity.

I actually get a chuckle from it – I assume that they mean “we, the buying public” are being saved by a zero interest loan, while I always think about how they hope to be saved by increased car sales.

I’m with Adina on this… I used to like that song. :-(
And the way they crank up the volume on commercials, it jumps out at you whenever it comes on.

From an economic standpoint, it actually is pretty remarkable for a high-demand auto maker to be in such straits that they need to push their products as much as the domestic companies are.

Here’s to hoping that Hyundai doesn’t resurrect their annoying commercials from last year’s Christmas season.

I hate it because they don’t air my Corrolla commercial.

@Andrew: I never did catch it… is it on YouTube or elsewhere on the web?

I dislike it because of the syntax. The statement “saved by zero”, really doesn’t make sense. I also dislike it for the giant zero that wobbles like a bowl of jello. It makes me slightly motion sick. Repetition is always annoying, and it really bugs me when a commercial only takes one soundbyte from a song and repeats it as a catchphrase. My thought is, use a catch phrase or use a song, but don’t try to combine them. I dislike advertising, in general, no matter how witty, because I always feel like I’m being brainwashed… these are the reasons why I dislike this ad. This also makes me somewhat skeptical of you… are you really working for Toyota and this is some covert way of assessing public opinion without doing any real work?

I like the song and I can’t stand the way the commercial used a small blip of the song. And the recording they use sounds just off and wrong. The voice is wrong and they’ve dulled out the texture of the music. It just sounds sad emo instead of 80s dance. I think they’ve slowed down the tempo, too. If they’d done this to use it in some comical way that’d be one thing, but nope. They just screwed up a song for no reason and it had no point.

YES, it’s on the tv right now _

That is an extremely annoying ad.

I do find it annoying, just because of the repetition. It gets stuck in my head, in a very bad way.

Back in the day, the strategy for car ads relating to price/purchase offers was to get you while you were up from the front of the television, in the kitchen fixing a snack. Hence, the volume increases for automotive price/financing spots. Normally, price/financing spots were created at the local/dealer level, either as a co-op ad, where the manufacturer often offered the dealership a rebate for the production costs, and the media buy as part of a co-op package. Often a :30 spot was provided, but it would include a :15 donut, or opening, for dealership-specific content. The dealership could often negotiate video production with a local television station, and the result would be cheap-looking production, lots of media insertions, for a tight window of time.

This ad, however, is so content-heavy that it has to rely on supers to dealer-brand the ad, with a voice-over at the end. For what it is, it’s too production slick. Squeezing 11 vehicle models into :30 is too much, and as a result, the timing of the visuals is just a bit too quick-paced for the make of the vehicles to even register. Add to that, the bendy thing that the zero does, and the result is akin to motion sickness. It’s too much movement, too fast. The music, which is the largest production cost of these spots, does little to enhance the offer.

The ad is a little too slick for what it is. Less would have been more.

Every time that ad airs on TV, God kills a kitten.