Neal McDonough has been having a rough go of it since leaving Justified. Mob City was cancelled after only one season, Robert Quarles’ sleeve-gun hasn’t caught on, and he’s the face of one of the most obnoxious commercials in recent memory. In “Poolside,” McDonough struts around his million-dollar home, spouting out nonsense about Americans going to the moon because we only take two weeks off in August, or something, before finally driving away in his 2014 Cadillac ELR. It was not well received:
I am writing about your commercial for the Cadillac ELR (I believe it is called Poolside). I find this commercial insulting and embarrassing. It’s portrayal of what it is to be an American and what Americans value leads me to feelings of shame–ashamed to be American. In turn it leads me to NEVER want to buy a Cadillac.
I wanted to share my thoughts with you first before communicating them to others. PLEASE PULL THIS AD! Despite my revulsion of this ad I believe the ELR is a wonderful product. Perhaps there might be another way to share about it with consumers–please! (Via)
Sensing blood in the water, or the car version of that (oil on the road?), Ford released a direct parody of the Cadillac ad, starring “Pasho Murray, a real woman who founded Detroit Dirt, a company that turns waste into compost and sells it to people who want to create urban gardens.” It’s a different kind of pandering — Cadillac: bored rich dudes; Ford: “crazy entrepreneurs trying to make the world better” — and still kind of obnoxious, but Murray wasn’t in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, so I’m on her side.
Cadillac
Ford
