Dear Subwaynow.com ad,
Okay, you win, I lose. I admit defeat. I tried to ignore you, but you&amp;#8217;ve worn down all my defenses. Perhaps I&amp;#8217;m too curious by nature, but I have to ask: What the hell are you supposed to be?
What message are you trying to convey?
At first I thought that that weird Chinese dragon thing on the left was some personification of the hunger felt by the man on the right&amp;#8212; like &amp;#8220;Uh-oh, his stomach is angry, but now with a Subway sandwich, he can defeat the monster!&amp;#8221;&nbsp; I guess I got that because the dragon&amp;#8217;s tail looks kind of like an intestine, and the dragon has dark hair, like the guy.&nbsp; But if that&amp;#8217;s what I&amp;#8217;m supposed to get from it, there should be some copy that reinforces that idea, right?&nbsp; Like &amp;#8220;Slay the Hunger Beast&amp;#8221; or something, right? Right?
Instead, the tagline is &amp;#8220;Order Ahead. Skip the lunch line.&amp;#8221; So, I guess that thing on the left is a lunch line? But why is it a dragon? Okay, I&amp;#8217;ll go with the metaphor and say the lunch line is a dragon, but then why is it only partially a dragon? Why does it have a dude&amp;#8217;s head? WHOSE HEAD IS THAT?
And why aren&amp;#8217;t they in a Subway restaurant, but in some weird white space? This ad is so ugly and weird I cannot look away. I need to know how many hoops this ad had to jump through, how many executives okayed this idea (the &amp;#8220;idea&amp;#8221; being, as near is I can tell, &amp;#8220;buy our food online so you don&amp;#8217;t have to spend any time with the disgusting and terrifying riffraff that frequent our shops&amp;#8221;). To me it looks like three different guys had ideas for ads, and the boss was just like, &amp;#8220;Ehhhhhh, put &amp;#8216;em all together.&amp;#8221; That, or someone has a nephew who&amp;#8217;s really into making gross papier-mache heads, and he was like, &amp;#8220;Hey, I&amp;#8217;ll give Little Kevin some work, why not?&amp;#8221;
This ad looks photoshopped in all the wrong ways. It looks like that guy&amp;#8217;s body parts were all photographed separately and then thrown together blindly, like an exquisite corpse drawing. The &amp;#8220;NOW&amp;#8221; part of the &amp;#8220;Subway NOW.&amp;#8221; logo looks like someone just put a sticker on the ad. Is that font supposed to look computer-y and high tech? Uh, because I guess it does if you haven&amp;#8217;t seen a computer in twenty years.
And so, Subwaynow.com ad, while you have failed in many, many, oh God so many ways, you have succeeded in one very important way. You&amp;#8217;ve gotten my attention and now I&amp;#8217;m writing in my blog about you, you stupid stupid ad that makes no sense.
Congratulations.