On Local Commercials

I don’t have cable, or satellite, or really any way to watch live TV in my apartment. But, don’t worry, I still see plenty of commercials. Watch something on YouTube and you’ll get five commercials for every minute of content. Watch Hulu, with a paid subscription, and you’re getting commercial breaks every ten minutes. Even social media is chock full of commercials, from Facebook to Reddit to Twitter and Instagram! I’m old enough to remember a time when the internet was a place you could get away from commercials, not drown in them! (Please excuse my old man rant, now get off my lawn!)

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that without commercials, most of my favorite industries would completely fall apart...but if I never saw another Progressive commercial with Flo in it, I wouldn’t shed a tear. 

What I’m getting at is that national commercials suck. They’re so generic, so bland, so clearly focus-grouped that they lack any and all interesting aspects! The only real exception is the time per year when commercials try to do something different: The Super Bowl. And even then, it’s a few funny ones mixed with a bunch that try to make me care about the Budweiser Draft Horses!

There is one sub-category of commercials that I still enjoy, even if it is a weird: local commercials. There’s something special about the low quality, unfiltered, earnestness of local commercials. You’re not seeing paid actors performing lines that have been written by professionals and vetted by high powered lawyers, you’re seeing an old man who owns a car dealership in Cerritos dance around in front of a green screen tell you that buying a car off his lot makes you family.

There’s also something about local commercials that make you feel like an insider. Only people who grew up in the same city, around the same time will know the phone number to the local injury attorney that was not only on every bus but played during the radio broadcast of every sporting event (RIP Cellino and Barnes injury attorneys, your jingle will forever live rent free in my head). 

Local commercials are also one of my favorite weird little parts of traveling! Visiting your grandma in Wisconsin? Get a load of the local Harley Davidson commercials that play during Brewers games. Hanging out with your cousin in Seattle? I wonder what the local mattress store’s jingle is going to sound like. Going on a road trip? Take a break from podcasts and Spotify to scan the local radio stations…you never know what restaurant or auto parts store it’ll lead you to.

So, while I’d rather not have to sit through six minutes of ads every time I wanted to watch a half hour of television, I’d rather sit through something local, something sincere, something exclusive to my area code, than something that the collective consciousness at some telecommunications giant decided would make me switch carriers (btw I’ll never switch because I’m incredibly lazy).

So, tell me about your favorite local commercial, the one you and all your friends still remember the jingle to!