Here’s another one, and it is again from Walmart. I do shop other places, but Walmart seems to have the most agregious examples (or the ones worth photographing, anyway).

The poor girl on this Faded Glory poster has dark circles under her eyes, dark enough to look like fading bruises from a black eye. It would gave taken a graphic designer a few minutes to ease or erase them. Instead, they’ve let this tired face fill a 4-foot tall display.

It probably would have helped if she looked happy, too.

The scene: night. A man drives his new Cadillac SRX on a scenic road far from town.

Suddenly, his new Cadillac stops for no apparent reason in the middle of a bridge. A bright light illuminates the car from directly above.

Its electronics go haywire. Doors open and close. Seats and storage bins open and close of their accord. Lights flash.

The light overhead fades away, appearing to release the Cadillac and its driver from their paralysis, and they continue on their way (probably high-tailing it home).

Shelves of portable hard drives.

But Walmart’s branding has failed. The Walmart “splat” logo icon is near the top of the display, and I think they’re relying on the icon alone to reinforce the Walmart brand.

Here’s why: Instead of using one of the stock phrases about savings (or even better, a custom phrase about technology savings) their designers decided to use this advertising for a line about taxes.

Huh? What do these hard drives have to do with taxes? Nothing. I even looked more closely to see if there was some kind package deal — buy a hard drive, get free tax software, or something like that. Nothing. Nada.

So instead of reinforcing the savings brand image, Walmart is confusing people.

(If Western Digital has seen this, they probably aren’t too happy either. I hope.)

Really, that was it? That was the commercial that had activists all in a tizzy?

Almost two weeks ago, Mike Celizic (writing for NBC) announced that money is the only reason CBS would agree to air this ad: 

There is no other reason — and certainly no good reason — for anyone, including a television executive, to decide that the ethical standards which had stood for generations are suddenly no more worth preserving than that hairball the cat just coughed up.

Really? You mean commercials during the big game have NEVER challenged ethics before? Those ethical standards have stood for generations?

Let’s take a look at the other ads that have aired tonight (so far). Back in the early days of this game, I seriously doubt any TV executive would have allowed an ad with:

1. men and women parading in their underwear around the office;
2. a woman ripping her shirt off (albeit with a camisole underneath) and an address where you can view the rest (which, the company is proud to say, was banned from TV); 
3. a man falling out of a casket full of snack chips – during his funeral;
4. a group of men walking the hills without pants on;
5. a close-up of a middle-aged football player’s rump with a cheetah-print thong visible above his pants; or even
6. Betty White getting thrown into a muddy puddle.

But they probably would have allowed an ad with a football player’s mom saying how much she loves her son. Which is all this ad really says.