My Brother and I would like to announce that it's on like Donkey Kong

The Oreo Double Stuff Racing League is pretty stupid as far as marketing schemes go, but this commercial is fairly excellent.

Monsters Wanted

Theladders.com is a job search site for the movers and the shakers. "The premium job site created exclusively for $100k+ talent looking for $100k+ jobs," their website says. I saw their latest commercial, the one above, while at the gym tonight. 

The first thing that struck me is the absolute tone-deafness of the ad. It's a fantastic metaphor for the current financial mess, which certainly wasn't created by little monsters like me, but by the big monsters, those making much greater than $100k salaries. It's an extra little twist of the knife that the area destroyed is not full of skyscrapers, but instead it's a modest-looking part of a city, with relatively short buildings. It reminded me a lot of Sixth Ave and Fourth St in New York City, just west of Washington Square. This neighborhood has lots of apartments, a little theater, some great restaurants, eclectic shops, and happens to be right near NYU, one of the victims of the Madoff disaster. While I haven't had the privilege of walking those streets in quite some time, I imagine that neighborhood has been hit hard by the current mess. 

On further review, though, I don't think the target market would be turned off by this ad. The peons, like me, and the masters of the universe, like Madoff, are not the targets of this ad. The target is the little monsters, each of whom thinks he's ready to be a big monster.