Air Force Commercial

[Mark Holtz]

The first time I saw this commercial, I thought it was for the cable company. Boy, was I wrong....

A bunch of guys are watching a football game when the DBS fades out. (Gee, I thought it was a all-or-nothing deal... you either have a picture or you have a "Signal Lost"). The guys ask the gal to fix the dish. So, she hops out the window, up the apartment ladder, picks up the dish which has toppled over, whips out the compass, aligns the dish, and whamo! the game is back.

Now, at this point, I'm thinking "Here comes a tag line going you won't expience this commercial." SURPRISE! We cut to the air force's center where they track satellites. It was a AIR FORCE COMMERCIAL.

Still, quite clever.

[Cheyenne]

Yeah, around the Denver area this ad has seen more air recently.
I figure the Air Force is trying to repair their image due to the most
recent scandal.... Women sexually harassed and raped, and all they do is ignore the claims. I think approx. a dozen women have come forward in the last week alone.
FYI - the Air Force Academy is located just north of Colorado Springs, so this is a hot issue in the area.

[gcutler]

That commerical has been around before the scandal broke, but I guess they can benefit from the female lead. I also thought it was a Cable Commercial when I first saw it.

[Steve Mehs]

I thought it was another Jeep commercial first time I saw it

[Crazy 1]

As long as we are no the subject of commercials, Has any one seen the one for charter cable, with the guy sitting on the roof with a satellite dish on his head? Trying to show how bad it is to sign up with DBS. Pretty silly if you ask me.

[catman]

The one I see is for Time Warner . the guy asks his dish "hellow . I want to see "sex in the city " now " . The guy sitis on roof with the dish pointing in the air .

[Cheyenne]

Interesting outcome from these negative DBS ads that the cable companies push, may actually promote the sales of DBS.
Viewers generally do not take these ads seriously and out of curiosity look into DBS as an alternative.
Why all the anti-DBS ads if DBS is so poor???

[waydwolf]

Originally posted by Cheyenne
Interesting outcome from these negative DBS ads that the cable companies push, may actually promote the sales of DBS.
Viewers generally do not take these ads seriously and out of curiosity look into DBS as an alternative.
Why all the anti-DBS ads if DBS is so poor???

    The primary drive from cable to satellite in my experience as an installer of both services(thus one on one exposure to all of the customers), is price and performance.

    But when you tell the average prospective satellite customer of what is required to do it, many balk.

    "I didn't know you had to face the southwest to get the stuff. I thought you just put it up wherever you wanted. I don't want that on my roof. Put it in my backyard. I don't care if my house is in the way."

    "I don't want any holes drilled in my house. The cable company already put holes in my house once before and I think that if we can put a space shuttle in orbit, we can do this wirelessly so you find a way young man and while you're at it, I want you to plug each and every hole the cable company put in my house and I better not catch you running any cables anywhere."

    "There is no way in Hell I am paying you a dime to put a tripod on my house. I don't care if my oak tree is in the way. I love that oak tree and my grandfather planted it and you will put the dish where I tell you to and that is going right there outside my living room window so I can see it at all times and make sure those neighborhood punks don't touch it the way they dig up my marijuana plants every year."

    I kid you not. Those are paraphrases of actual customer statements during satellite installs. I transition five times as many people from satellite to cable as from cable to satellite easily. This will continue as long as the satellite industry tries to keep prices artificially low to compete(which cannot continue as any competent businessman knows), and tries to go for the softsell to the same crowd that find AOL to be perplexing brain surgery.

    And let us not forget the extreme everything people who are disappointed they are not getting a personal cable head end in a box and able to immediately split like cable to fifteen receivers and have to spend money on switches and amplifiers. "I think that for this price I should be able to hook it to a damn Casio handheld TV if I so choose and not need a receiver or smart card or any of that malarkey. And I want three sets hooked up in my ten year old's bedroom because she likes to watch different things at once. Make it happen."

    On the other hand, to this day, cable company service representatives still sell cable modem service at any cost telling people we can put the modem outside on the pole, that we can do it wirelessly, that it merely makes their old dialup modem run faster, etc.

    Is it any wonder the IBM commercials regarding mythical business IT solutions like server fairy dust seem so deadpan to me?

 

[Mark Holtz]

Originally posted by waydwolf
But when you tell the average prospective satellite customer of what is required to do it, many balk.

"I didn't know you had to face the southwest to get the stuff. I thought you just put it up wherever you wanted. I don't want that on my roof. Put it in my backyard. I don't care if my house is in the way."

"I don't want any holes drilled in my house. The cable company already put holes in my house once before and I think that if we can put a space shuttle in orbit, we can do this wirelessly so you find a way young man and while you're at it, I want you to plug each and every hole the cable company put in my house and I better not catch you running any cables anywhere."

"There is no way in Hell I am paying you a dime to put a tripod on my house. I don't care if my oak tree is in the way. I love that oak tree and my grandfather planted it and you will put the dish where I tell you to and that is going right there outside my living room window so I can see it at all times and make sure those neighborhood punks don't touch it the way they dig up my marijuana plants every year."

Sounds like tech support. Were these folks smoking crack at the time?

[Cheyenne]

Man, I'm glad I do not have to deal with consumers
for a living.

[Bogy]

In my area there is a DirecTV ad where the installer is running down the list of what the homeowner wants. The guy's real nervous, "Can't we go around to the back of the house to talk about this? That's where the dish has to go anyway."
Installer, "You work for the cable company, right?"

Yeah, right. Cox cable employees get their cable free, with basically the same lineup and quality. It's just about as realistic as the Cable commercials. :D

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Bogy
Yeah, right. Cox cable employees get their cable free, with basically the same lineup and quality. It's just about as realistic as the Cable commercials. :D

Although when I worked at MetLife and got a major discount on insurance I was not allowed to have a personal Insurance Agent, had to call an employee hotline (or their new automated hotline at the time) Most employees I knew ended up swtiching to another vendor because of lack of service courted the employees. I figure a Cox employee can't call up and yell at the service reps (especially when free and not just discounted) I like to yell, so may want to pay to have that right :D Not so unrealistic for a Cox employee to pay to have right to yell :p

[bogi]

Originally posted by Z'Loth
The first time I saw this commercial, I thought it was for the cable company. Boy, was I wrong....

A bunch of guys are watching a football game when the DBS fades out. (Gee, I thought it was a all-or-nothing deal... you either have a picture or you have a "Signal Lost"). The guys ask the gal to fix the dish. So, she hops out the window, up the apartment ladder, picks up the dish which has toppled over, whips out the compass, aligns the dish, and whamo! the game is back.


I seen this commercial too and it was a Soccer game. And it was a itallian or spanish family and during the game the tv fades out and the father sends the girl to fix it. Once the girl fixes the dish with her compas their favorite team scores a Goal and the whole family cheers.

I liked the commercial:D

[Bogy]

Originally posted by gcutler
Although when I worked at MetLife and got a major discount on insurance I was not allowed to have a personal Insurance Agent, had to call an employee hotline (or their new automated hotline at the time) Most employees I knew ended up swtiching to another vendor because of lack of service courted the employees. I figure a Cox employee can't call up and yell at the service reps (especially when free and not just discounted) I like to yell, so may want to pay to have that right :D Not so unrealistic for a Cox employee to pay to have right to yell :p That might be a problem if there was anything to yell about, but all the Cox csr's and techs are so dang nice and helpful that I have never had to yell. And I'm a yeller.