Serious Business/Advertising

This page features ads that are "Serious Business." It should be noted that in many of these ads, the fact that people are taking to product so seriously is the intended joke.

• There's a Brazilian beer ad where we have the captain of a sinking ship trying to salvage four passengers. They ask if they can take their beer box with them. After the captain informs there will not be enough room for them and the box, they send him and all other survivors away, just so they can stay with the beer box. While they stand on a freaking sinking ship. Cut to the guys sitting on an iceberg (unexplainably next to a tropical coastline) with a seal which they use to make the beer chill faster. If this isn't Serious Business, then I guess these guys had hung around with Barney Gumble before.
  • What kind of ship has enough room for a case of beer but not four people? You'd think people on a sinking ship would be pretty understanding about having to sit in the engine room or in the mess hall...
    • If they're on a sinking ship, they're probably escaping into life boats, which are quite small, so there conceivably wouldn't be room for four people and a beer box.
• Another ad that is set in an arctic station, similar to the above Bud Light example, has some people pull up and find all the people inside starving to death. They find that there are plenty of rations and enough food to go around, then they come across the reason for their hunger: there's no more Heinz ketchup left, the only bottle being empty.
• An early-80s commercial featured a family arguing over which kind of toothpaste to buy. The teenage son says, "But mom, what about my social life? I need a gel for fresh breath."
• If there was any board game that was Serious Business, it had to be Crossfire. Crossfire! Crossfire! CROSSFIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!
  • "HUH!"
• Similar to the beer and ketchup ads from above, some 90s Miracle Whip commercials would feature someone making a huge, delicious looking sandwich... and then throwing the whole thing into the garbage when it turns out they're out of Miracle Whip. (God forbid you just stick the sandwich in the refrigerator while you run down to the store!)
  • Heck, there was one where Sylvester refused to eat Tweety because of a lack of Miracle Whip.
  • And now the modern Miracle Whip commercials are passing the product off as being almost counter-cultural and revolutionary as if it were rock and roll in the 50's or 60's. "We are Miracle Whip, and we will not tone it down."
  • But in 2006, it did exactly that.
• Averted by Norwegian pop brand Solo, which ads generally featured some guy screwing something up, and the blurb "Solo - quite possibly the only pop that doesn't help against anything but thirst" popping up on the screen, telling us it's just pop, not serious business.
• On a similar theme, one Sprite advert in the UK went out of its way to inform the viewer that it would not make them run faster, jump higher or become more attractive to the opposite sex.
• Does anyone else get the feeling that breakfast is becoming serious business with McDonald's lately? Yes, McDonald's, we get it already. Breakfast is greater than Chuck Norris.
• Pace Picante sauce, because it's made in San Antonio. Where the competitor's is from... * gasp* NEW YORK CITY!? Get the rope.
• Without a doubt a parody, but these ads for Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator, from the movie Idiocracy, gets away with being over-the-top hilarious Serious Business.
• 1-800-Contact commercials seem to be a parody of these kind of commercials, with over-the-top acting and melodrama. Even the commercials come with a little disclaimer at the beginning, stating that the commercials are overdramatic.
• Burger King treats the king giving out deals to people as serious business. So much seriousness that he is mentally incapable of taking care of himself.
• "Nobody lay a finger on my Butterfinger!"
• Bridgestone Tires made commercials with a Mad-Max-esque world where a man would rather leave his wife behind than give up his Bridgestone Tires.
• Parodied in a series of commercials for Allied Discount Tires, a statewide tire chain in Florida. The pitchman, standing in front of a green-screen image of an Allied Discount Tire outlet, would state it outright that buying tired was nothing special: "You don't ever come into a tire store and say 'My neighbor has some real nice tires!' Tires don't do nothin' for your social status. You go, they go, you stop, they stop. They don't mean nothin'. You come in, you won't find no coffee or donuts. Hell, you might not even find a place to sit down!? But what you will find are tires, cheap!".
• A recent deoderant commercial features several jobs such as the secret service, a surgeon, and a fireman at work and saying "when you're under pressure, you're deoderant is too weak" implying that smelling good should be placed above saving lives.
  • Or that a person trapped in a burning building would turn down a rescuer with a mild body odor.
• Clearly, Nissan wants to believe that when selling a new car, donuts are Serious Business.
• UPS even quotes the trope in one of their commercials.
• "No! Not my Corn Pooooooooooooooooooooooooops!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!"
• Let's not a forget Head and Shoulders. Someone would spot the man/woman of their dreams and upon seeing him/her scratch their head, would completely pass him/her by.
  • The newest ads still use this concept. Characters with dandruff are scared out of their minds of scratching their scalp for fear of being shunned.
• Inverted with the line "I've fallen and I can't get up!" from the LifeLine emergency medical pendant commercial, which was subject to Memetic Mutation. According to Bill Bryson's At Home, 85% of people who die in stair-related injuries are over 65, because they fall and they can't get up. When the slogan became the property of the similar Life Alert company, they used it in a much less campy manner. They were not above cutting a deal with Hallmark to use the phrase in sound-based greeting cards, though.
• The Sega Saturn was Segata Sanshiro's way of life. If you didn't play it, he beat the living crap out of you.