The E*Trade baby is back, so… yay? Everyone makes a big deal about having live chimps in a commercial, but nobody cares about exploiting a human baby. Typical animal rights lefties. We have to question the wisdom of taking financial advice from a baby, even if it can talk.
Technology companies haven’t typically been a large presence during the Super Bowl, at least not compared with beer and cars, the two big daddies of Super Bowl ad time. Over the years, as technology becomes a greater and greater influence on our daily lives, this has slowly shifted and brought us more and better technology commercials that frequently rival the creative output of even the Great God of Super Bowl Advertising, Anheuser-Busch. Today let’s take a quick walk down memory lane and see some of the more memorable tech ads that have graced our televisions over the years.
The E*Trade baby is back, for better or for worse. Where CareerBuilder’s chimps felt like a breath of fresh air and a welcome return to the past, this baby just seems like a pathetic excuse to not have to think about coming up with another concept. And seriously, hasn’t this stupid baby aged at all? He’s just been a freaking baby for years… hey, maybe that’s like a superpower! Maybe he’s a brilliant baby with the mind of a 40 year-old investor but he never ages? That actor playing the tailor needed to be given the superpower of learning how to convincingly interact with something that wasn’t really there.
Featuring what may be the greatest visual symbolism ever in a Super Bowl commercial, a chimpanzee riding a horse, this E-Trade spot encourages us to “invest wisely”. We don’t think the ad will make much if any sense within a few years, since nobody will remember what that sock puppet is supposed to represent, but for its time it was a clever spot with a simple premise.
Oh, and did we mention that it has a chimp riding a horse?
The tables are turned when the bank’s own employees lead a bank heist, but this time they’re robbing their own customers. Someone must have been looking into a crystal ball when they wrote this spot.
Our favorite part is the bank manager’s perfect Adam Sandler impression when he yells at everyone to get “down on the floor!”
Brilliantly done spot featuring the many uses of the valiant index finger, with one notable exception at the end.
The ironic thing is that “reallocating your entire portfolio” is the one thing in the ad you actually can’t do with just one finger, but in the spirit of the game we’ll give E*Trade a bye on that one.
