Only the folks at Jeppson's Malört can make a commercial that pokes fun at the liquor's flavor and invoke Godwin's Law at the same time. more ›

The Museum of Broadcast Communications has an online exhibition of classic television commercials dating back to the early years of television. Glad it's online. We didn't want to have to bundle up and view the exhibit from the trunk of Bruce DuMont's car. The exhibit is a wonderful way to decrease your productivity at work. Of particular note is the section dedicated to local commercials, featuring such notables as the Victory Auto Wreckers commercial; an old Marshall Field's commercial ("As Chicago as it gets"); a Commonwealth Edison commercial from 1967 (the screencap we used for this post); and an Eagle Insurance spot featuring Mancow Muller. more ›

Groupon's next step in its quest for online discount shopping domination: Advertising during the Super Bowl. The local startup has quietly partnered with marketing agencies to promote the company with some old-fashioned advertising, including buying some spots for the Super Bowl pre-game next month. Ad spots for the game itself, which command prices of up to $3 million, sold out by October. more ›

Celebrities go overseas to act as commercial pitchmen all the time. And we thought we'd seen them all until yesterday. more ›

You would think after over two decades of cutting bankruptcy infomercials, Peter Francis Geraci would have developed a speaking style that wasn't a dry monotone. Geraci's voice, to us, is the sound of bankruptcy and we never want to hear it trained in our direction. more ›

The White Sox enlisted in Ozzie Guillen to help promote sales of a 13-game "Ozzie Plan" by having him film a commercial, with predictable results. more ›

With days to go before the general election, major television stations are pulling Bill Brady's campaign commercials because he hasn't paid for the airtime. And here we thought the ads last night seemed slightly less offensive because the politicians wised up on negative ads. more ›

If anyone else besides the Muppets were to make an Old Spice Guy commercial just as that meme was about to fade into obscurity, we'd probably snark about striking while the iron is hot. But this parody featuring Grover is pretty damn cute. more ›

Today marks two milestones in Chicago history. The first event, of course, is the 129th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire. Reams upon reams of paper have been been spent chronicling one of the seminal events in Chicago's history. We'll refer you over to the Chicago History Museum's online portal for all things regarding the fire for reference. more ›

Who are we to begrudge an artist from making money off their work? Still, we were dismayed to see that the new jingle attached to ads for the atrocity beer that is Bud Light Lime is Chicago's own Kid Sister and her song "Daydreaming." Yes, following in the footsteps of previous hip-hop/indie cross-over phenom Santogold, Kid Sis's song is being used in a national campaign to sell an awful beer to people who just seem hell-bent on not ordering Corona. Get used to hearing that 30-second clip of the song a lot over the course of the next year. Of course, given the city's fears about alcohol and a Kid Sister show not mixing well, the irony of the commercial isn't lost on us. more ›

Both Cubs and White Sox fans share an affection for the late Harry Caray. While he cemented a legendary career on the North Side, his years calling games with Jimmy Piersall in old Comiskey Park often veered into high art. But Harry was also something of a populist gourmand, as the two videos we've found show. The first one is a 1980 commercial for La Preferida Mexican food products. Caray was still broadcasting Sox games then, you could still make out what he was saying and, as you'll see near the end of the clip, he was always a man of the people. more ›

It's no Eagle Man, but this Seattle-area car dealership commercial is pretty dang terrible in a "we can't look away" way. more ›

Michael Morowitz of the Local Beet tipped us to this commercial for Sunsweet prunes featuring Waukegan's native son, Ray Bradbury. more ›

The above picture is of 19,000 Gatorade bottles used to create a mosaic for an upcoming Gatorade commercial honoring Michael Jordan. The location is basketball court somewhere on the South Side. Looks pretty cool, no? You can read more about it over at Ball Don't Lie, one of the Yahoo! Sports blogs. [via Gapers Block]. more ›

Yesterday, we brought you a trio of cute, cuddly, and funny insurance commercials. But reader "augustkl" took umbrage with our calling the ads the greatest ad campaign of all time, suggesting, instead, that the title was held by the locally produced Eagle Man commercials. After looking at these three ads, we think he may be on to something. Like a John Waters movie crossed with Sesame Street on meth, the Eagle Man commercials make the Empire jingle sound like Tchaikovsky. more ›

No, that's not a joke. Contrary to popular belief, we've been known to put a mass-produced beer to our lips from time to time. One thing we'll be able to tell our grandkids about last night is that we had a Pabst Blue Ribbon in our hand when ABC's Charlie Gibson called the election for President-elect Obama. (Wow! That sounds good.) more ›

The Chicago 2016 Committee unveiled its new commercial, narrated by CSI's William Peterson, a Chicago native. The copy is rousing, positively busting with civic pride, etc, etc, but man, that stock footage looks cheesy. more ›

These ads for Americans for the Arts were created by Chicago's own Leo Burnett agency. It's goooood! more ›

Fascinating article in the NYT Magazine yesterday about a Chicago company that revives old but they hope not forgotten brands like Brim, Salon Selectives, Eagle and Nuprin. After megacompanies merge, sometimes name brands get folded together. And that's where River West Brands comes in. more ›

In yesterday's Extra, Extra we announced the "triumphant" return of Classic Schlitz, and today the Trib's Phil Rosenthal looks at why Schlitz left in the first place. Sure, it could be that they messed with the formula, changing it from watered down piss to watered down piss with a hint of asparagus, or, as Rosenthal thinks, maybe it was their god awful advertising. Specifically, this spot that he dubs "Drink Schlitz or I'll Kill You": more ›

Now here's a blast from the past. It's Linn Burton of Burt Weinman Ford showing off the best used car deals that 1982 had to offer. How our family were able to resist buying the deathtrap that was the Ford Pinto, we have no idea. more ›

One of the more contentious races in Tuesday's election is at the Cook County Board of Review, where incumbent Joe Berrios is facing a stiff challenge in trial lawyer Jay Paul Deratany. For many homeowners throughout Cook County, the Board of Review is their best chance at finding relief from both the monster property tax increases proposed by Mayor Daley and the County Board and the skyrocketing assessments of County Assessor Jim Houlihan. more ›

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the death of Harold Washington. The Chicago of 1983 was very different from the Chicago of 2007: factories were shutting down, and white middle-class homeowners were leaving the city in droves, taking their property taxes and urban stability with them. An alarming upswing in crime and drugs, coupled with escalating racial tensions left many Chicagoans nervous about the future. Richard J. Daley had been dead for seven years, and... more ›

In light of last week's news that almost a quarter of Ilinoisians are obese, should a new study that found that 98% of all food advertised to children between the ages of two and 11 was high in sugar, fat or sodium really surprise us? Slightly less alarming (but only slightly) was the finding that 89.4% of food-product advertisements viewed by 12-to-17 year olds, were high in fat, sugar, or sodium. The study was conducted... more ›

In the mid 90's we were television addicts. From soaps to sitcoms, we soaked up nearly everything the tube could offer. Our collection of VHS tapes at the time was chock full of good stuff. But in some cases it was the commercials that we loved most. One of our favorites featured Judy Tenuta drinking Diet Dr. Pepper while "working out" at the gym. The moment she proclaiming "You can't get a body like mine... more ›

It’s all fun and games until someone calls sell-out, but how is almost every artist not a sell-out when it comes to putting tunes behind a commercial these days? From the use of “Lust for Life” to get us aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise to Wilco shilling for Volkswagen, what are the best or worst songs used in commercials? Mark Caro wants your comments about that over at his blog, Pop Machine. Do we care... more ›

We can be scatterbrained sometimes. There's just so much cool stuff going on all the time that it's easy to forget a few things now and then. And that's exactly what happened yesterday when we neglected to give a shout out to Mr. Roger Ebert, who celebrated his birthday. There's a soft spot in our collective heart for Mr. Ebert. Long ago we forgave him for his once-scathing reviews of David Lynch films; for one,... more ›

We don't normally run out and buy things just because we see them on commercials. There have been two recent exceptions to that rule (way thumbs up and fairly disappointing), but for the most part, we just wish we had a DVR. more ›

Back in May of 2003 we started watching one of the few reality shows that had us hooked from the first episode. Four years later we're still watching and have become borderline obsessive/compulsive about America's Next Top Model. It's not Tyra that's the draw for us. Nor is it Twiggy, the original waif. Not Nigel Barker who is "married", nor is it even really about the girls competing for the big win (well, maybe just... more ›

At the risk of inciting a riot, Chicagoist is back with another shameful (and frozen) secret. And the secret is simple: we like ourselves a frozen pizza every once in a while. We usually prefer fresh pizza over the frozen variety, but there are nights (usually intoxicated, late nights) where all we want to do is get home and throw a frozen pizza in the oven. Yes, the cheese is never as good nor the... more ›