There Are Only 4 Commercials Now transcript

Commercial breaks used to have variety, but now we get spammed with the big four. A lot of times they even loop the same exact commercial in your face. It's irritating, but entirely intentional. Let's look at all four. Then I'll show you the unethical design behind this. Let's start with a big one. 10 years ago, gambling was not something you'd be sold on TV. Today, during a single football game, sports betting and fantasy apps make up a massive percentage of the entire commercial inventory.

And it's all the same formula. These advertisements approach you with urgency and tap into a desire for some level of superficial status. Not the methodical, well-intentioned slow patience of a high-yield savings account. No. Fast money, fast cuts, bass drops, trap instrumentals, bright neon colors, and usually some nonsense get a great head start, play for free, you know, some some kind of hook like that. Usually with a big recognizable figure delivering it to you ranging from, you know, internet personalities like Sketch or Druski to household [music] names, Rob Gronkowski, Kevin Hart, even Bill Belichick.

Like, man, what [music] are we doing, man? I'm so for real. You can You can probably even vaguely remember the little script they read to you. Sign up now to claim XYZ in bonus bets. You know, something like that. Have you noticed they never say gambling? They never say that word. Why? I remember complaining of television degeneracy with the beer ads for the longest, and I still have a bone to pick, but, you know, let's stay focused.

I know what you're thinking. History Helms, why are fifth graders and the elderly alike watching Druski tell them to gamble? Long story short, it's because the Supreme Court uh gave states the power to regulate sports betting in 2018. So, the goblins who create this nonsense, of course, jump at the opportunity while you are watching sports. They know that you think you know a thing or two about the game. What? Ole Miss is definitely seven points better than Louisville.

What? Rutgers is easily four touchdowns better than that team that went 0 and 12 last year. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. Next thing you know, you're down 50 or worse. Let's be real, or worse. Based on the impulse-driven chance at fast money. A sign of palpable class decay, might I say, but that's for another video. Like I said, we'll get into why we see the big four in particular now, but we get a big clue from that debt aspect of it all.

Captivity by any means. Gambling is absurd by its very nature. Odds are you're going to lose money in high-tempo impulsive fashion. If you could win consistently, this industry wouldn't exist. Insurance, on the other hand, has to inject its own absurdity into the product since it's a mandatory, inherently boring financial product. With the exception of a few of us, I know some of you some of you are indeed a bit strange, nobody's waking up on a Saturday morning absolutely pumped, man, electric, about their auto liability limits or bundling home and auto insurance.

That felt nasty to say, man. I'm I'm like 99% sure that's exactly what they say in the commercials. But do you see what I mean? They spam it, and that spam is part of the strategy. You just need to see it. No different than a minute-long ad where they show you anything and everything, only to reveal, "Oh, it's a Coke ad." Really? Because the product itself is invisible and practically identical across major providers, insurance companies gave up on selling coverage decades ago.

Instead, they sell mascots and sitcom bits to be memorable. >> [music] >> They Excuse me briefly, I'm going off script. Just stay with me, though. They put that freaking emu slop in front of me again. Man, I'm I'm going to lose my mind. If you know me, you know I'm not an angry person by any means, by any metric, but something about the the something about these ads, and many others, but these in particular, they make this unfunny, unrelatable garbage, and it gives me this like rage I never knew I had.

Like is this what the the nameless faceless suits think we like? If anything, I make sure I avoid doing business with anything close to a Liberty Mutual just because of the way they irritate me in what feels 100% intentional, and it is. I'm not going to curse, but man, if there's ever a time to curse. >> [laughter] >> Anyway, this category dominates your screen whenever you're watching really anything but sports especially through sheer volume and celebrity saturation.

State Farm pairs NFL superstars with actors. Progressive has made this entire cinematic universe around bad jokes and Flo that I guess people they I guess they think people are following, I don't know. And you even have Geico. Well, I'm not going to lie, I like Geico. I do. But they're guilty, too. They spend billions to make sure this is in front of your face whenever possible. They want top-of-mind recall. If you can remember a quote from any of these commercials, they've won.

And guess what? We remember them, don't we? That's the problem. But it goes back to this clue that the big four share, captivity. [music] And here's our second clue, commitment. Now, apparently I didn't I didn't know this, but apparently you and I are buying new cars every other week, or at least that's the way it seems. Automotive ads have been a staple of television pretty much since we had televisions. But during sports broadcasts, you really are going to get sold either a family SUV or the biggest truck you've ever seen going places you wouldn't dare take your vehicle.

You may be shocked to learn this, but they use the same exact formula over and over. A massive pickup riding off terrain, maybe a quick shot on the road just to show you it can go there, too. They'll probably splash with some water or something, and there'll be this voiceover that sounds Southern only to British ears, and [music] with with perhaps the lowest effort rock music one can conceive. There's not a lick of soul in anything you'll hear in a truck commercial, I promise you.

I I swear to you I'm not joking. There's even a specific category on a lot of these stock music sites called truck commercial rock. Do you feel that? Doesn't that do something? Doesn't that make you, you know, you know? By the way, if you have ad fatigue or I just made you smile, drop me a like and hype the video as well. It really helps. Thank you. This type of commercial or this category, I should say, heavily relies on identity.

They frame buying a specific truck not as a utility purchase, no. Instead, they sell this faux image of innate masculinity confirmed not by the man's character, but by his truck. Look, man, you can you can tell that guy he's rough, baby. He he works with his hands. Oh, well, how can you tell? Well, he pulled up in a truck and well, from that piece of information, we can say for certain, baby, he's manly. Boy, boy, he's tough, boy.

It's so stupid. They never They never show you the bed of the truck cuz, look, man, that's got nothing to do with the truck, babe. Everybody knows the point of a truck is to put empty Mountain Dew and Powerade bottles in the bed and then do whatever you want in parking lots. Look, man, truck is kind of tough. I mean, come on. Come on. Maybe this makes me a hypocrite, but if I catch you in the F-150 deep in the city with a clean bed, I'm going to label you a city slicker.

You better use that bed, boy. >> [music] >> What? You better put that bed to good use. >> [laughter] >> Oh, man, I need to stop, man. But, the whole purpose of this truck and SUV segment I just talked about trucks, but >> [laughter] >> Anyway, the whole purpose of this segment is indeed loyalty. Have you put it all together yet? If you haven't, it'll definitely be obvious after our final category. They got a new prescription drug every other day with the most insane name you ever heard of and man, they let you know about it.

The United States and New Zealand are the only two developed nations in the world that allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising and it feels like the interdimensional television from Rick and Morty. Once again, there's an unavoidable formula once you notice it. Some style of utopia represented by an elder throwing a baseball or something with a grandchild or a lady and an actor telling us about how she can, you know, uh do yoga without uh spinal pain now.

And just like truck commercial rock, there is some soul-free, detached, jingle-focused music [music] to try to hack your brain and get ooh Excuse me. to try to hack your brain and get you on their stuff as the soothing voice, unlike the silky baritone timbre you receive from History [music] Hoax, casually lists horrifying potential side effects at 200 words per minute. But as I I once heard, there is no such thing as side effects, only effects.

And then we have the GOPs. Ooh, boy. Remember like a couple years ago was mostly just Ozempic? You you just kind of heard about it through word of mouth and social media, but not a not a ton on TV though, right? You remember that? Yeah, I remember too. Now we see entire social media pages dedicated just to injecting weight loss juice and watching what happens next. And just like what the the sports betting ads, even the most trusted figures you'd least expect to sell you muscle-melting weight loss injections or pills I hear they have now are putting Mounjaro, Zepbound, Wegovy in your face.

Like why is why is Charles Barkley trying to get me on that stuff? Is that Serena Williams? 23-time Grand Slam champion super athlete Serena Williams? I know that she knows what a calorie deficit is, which makes it worse when she's trying to sell you and me the weight loss BBL. Yeah, that's crazy. But the specific medication itself is besides the point for our purposes. The goal was to get you on it and keep you on it.

Our final clue is dependency, captivity, commitments, loyalty, dependency. Put them together and you see all four of these industries are designed to pull you in and keep you stuck. Not because what is offered is simply excellent, but because trapping the consumer is the new business model. The gambling goblins and bookies know how dumb you feel after placing a bet you just knew would hit only to whiff and be forced into the hole and now you want it back.

So you bet again and now you're held captive after just a few impulsive Saturday night bets. The insurance strategy is to sell you peace of mind while quietly raising premiums banking on you doing anything to avoid talking to robots on the phone and battling exit fees. The car manufacturer wins when it keeps you locked in not much different from how an iPhone purchase locks you into such a deep ecosystem that leaving and switching to something else feels so uncomfortable that it's really not an option.

The hope is that one purchase will turn into generational loyalty. Pharma ads have no interest in marketing cures. Grass is green history helms. Preventative care is not profitable. Once the voices in the screen get you to want a product and your doctor gives the all clear, you physically purchase the medicine and it does make a measurable improvements your life. That's a good thing. But the ideal outcome for the company is that you'll get hooked on the small doses of dependence tucked away in the bottle.

Not literally of course for legal reasons. But you get what I mean. If they wanted to do honest business then they'd mention dependence as one of the side effects in the commercial. A company solving a problem doesn't kill the problem. It just transforms the problem into a new missed opportunity that hurts the company. For these companies if they do a great job your life will indeed revolve around the monthly pick up and living without the medicine isn't idea that carries some anxiety along with it.

And they're good at this too. They they are stellar. Just ask any of the absolute troopers who operate a pharmacy. It's it's a a different level of the regular retail insanity. Of course there are still some industries you'll see like the Applebee's deals that are somehow better than better value than fast food now for some reason. And the the same exact woke up feeling the cheesiest commercial. I'm very upset with that one.

It's I see it too much. But the real reason ad space is now dominated by four industries is precisely of problem exchange I mentioned a minute ago. You go eat at Applebee's one time, God bless your heart, and the cash flow ends once you get up and leave. But, the big four multi-billion-dollar industries can afford to jam ads down your throat, spending up to $1.5 million per 30-second primetime slot, because securing long-term customers finances the spam in an endless cycle of garbage.

And you know just as well as I do that if you watch a college football game, you're not just going to see this one particular ad one time. No, they run it two, [music] sometimes even three times. So, this adds up, right? So, we'll get a better idea of the scope of this all, how much money's coming in as they put this in front of you at every turn. Meanwhile, the ads you used to see on TV are now primarily found in your social media feeds, specifically tailored to you.

But, that's for another video, of course. A company advertising to you used to at least feel like a good faith invitation, where an honest exchange would be carried out. But, now everything really does just feel like an attempt to trick us into a subscription as the value goes down and the price goes up, manifesting in the form of microtransactions in single-player games, and streaming services that show ads even though you're already paying.

It really is awful. I usually make American history videos, but sometimes it's fun to do a little project looking at more culturally relevant stuff. If you like this, I promise you'll like these.