Blast From The Past - Local Advertising

When I was younger, my favorite commercials were the local ones. You know, the ones with horrible production values, lousy scripts, and the store owner from down the street making an ass out of himself on camera in the name of another dollar. As a kid, I had a really odd sense of humor, and stuff like everyone's favorite liquor store owner, Connecticut's own Crazy Bruce, made me laugh my little head off. How can you not find this funny?



and we cannot forget the Tires Plus Wheels guy, another local legend.



There's always Bob of Bob's Discount Furniture, the guy that did the Ruby Vine Railroad Discount warehouse, or something like that...even today, Connecticut has Stephen Barbarino car dealers doing the low budget thing.

When I was little, they would make me laugh, and not knowing anything at all about advertising or marketing, had no idea that over twenty years later, I would still remember them and be writing a blog post about them. Looking back on them, it was very obvious that local businesses were willing to do just about anything they could to stand out from the national advertisers that got 99% of the advertising time on television. If they had to sing a stupid song, or a funny dance, or just make an idiot of themselves on TV to get noticed, they would do it.

There's really nothing like those ads on TV these days. There are very few businesses willing to do what it takes anymore, and that's a huge problem.

Where are you from and what were your favorite old horrible local commercials? I know you have some.

Thanks for reading...