This is a cellphone ad. I’m assuming that the name of the phone is the Jelly Bean, but if it’s not, then I understand this ad even less.

I’m not quite sure if this flies in Japan, but it sure as heck wouldn’t fly in the US. The idea of jelly beans with butts kind of freaks me out, moreso than jelly beans wearing panties. Add in the fact that a jelly bean boy biting the panties off of an uninterested jelly bean girl just makes this all kinds of uncomfortable for everyone.

This ad would not make me want to get a Jelly Bean phone; really, it would just make me want to stay away from the sketchy guy in the corner with his blue Jelly Bean phone. You really have to wonder what kind of person came up with this, and what demographic it’s for (the panty stealing audience?).

Would you buy a Jelly Bean phone after seeing this ad?

You know what focus groups are? Those things where you talk to a company in a group and they pay you for your time that are always labeled as “easy money” in articles, but are impossible to find? I was in an online one for Cox.

Cox is a big media company, spanning from radio to internet service to I don’t know what else. Before this community, my only association with Cox was the fact that they shut down my favorite radio station, modern rock/alternative Radio 104.1 out of Hartford, CT, and put yet another hip hop/reggaeton station in its place without warning around 2004-2005. To me, this was inexcusable. There is a plethora of hip hop stations in my area, and there still isn’t another station that plays the same things that Radio 104 in my radio market.

Three years ago, I was doing an online survey and got an invitation to join an online message board for Cox. Since I was still miffed at Cox at this time, I jumped on it. In exchange for doing four activities per month (message board replies, surveys, whatever), I would get $15 in Amazon Gift Certificates.

Over the lifetime of the board, I figure I earned upwards of $500 in Amazon cash for doing this board. This paid for all of my college textbooks, plus other stuff. I probably lived a lot more comfortably in college because I didn’t have to worry about paying for books out of pocket. Looking back on it, this board was extremely valuable to me.

What did Cox get out of this arrangement, though? Over the lifetime of the board, I started to feel much, much warmer towards Cox. As someone who loves radio very much, losing my radio station destroyed Cox’s reputation in my mind. Being part of the community made me really come around to them again, and I would say that my view of them is pretty darn favorable.

It wasn’t just the gift certificates, though. When you do something like this, you really do feel like you are giving valuable input. I think the gift certificates really show that they do value our opinions. Another value this has for Cox is that since the people in the group have a favorable opinion of the company, we will pass that on to others if Cox comes up in a conversation. Word of mouth is really one of the most effective ways of marketing anything, so the company has really gained that.

All in all, I think that being in that community was invaluable for both Cox and myself. I’m sad to see it go, but it’s really amazing that it went on for this long. I think everyone won from this arrangement, and I would love to do another one of these things for another company sometime.

Have you ever done a focus group or online community for a company? Has something happened where your opinion of a company did a 180 as a result?

I don’t usually watch the Super Bowl, but my boyfriend was here this weekend and he wanted to watch it. We camped out in the living room with laptops and I worked on stuff while he paid attention to the game. I paid attention to the screen when there were commericals: my personal favorite had an Abe Vigoda cameo.

Sometime during the first half, there was a commercial forCareerBuilder. CareerBuilder isn’t one of my favorite sites for job searching, but their overly casual Friday ad was pretty funny. The plethora of underwear clad coworkers makes you uncomfortable at first, then you just laugh at the poor uncomfortable guy in the office. However, the ad that came afterwards it killed the joke for both commercials: the Docker’s ad. Dockers’ ad featured a mob of pantsless singing men. While I was amused at the office staffed by people in their underwear, it became too awkward when the men without pants came on. Even though I hurried to the Docker’s website to try to win my boyfriend a free pair of pants, I wasn’t feeling too great about Dockers at the time. It wasn’t so much the content, but two herds of people not wearing pants was too big a turn off for me.

I don’t know if companies have any idea of what is coming before or after their commercials when they buy a Super Bowl slot, but I think that’s something that advertisers will need to pay attention to in the future. If the two commercials were spaced out, they would probably have a much better reception. However, when they were shown back to back like that, it just felt awkward, and made the viewer think that maybe one company was copying the other. Whatever organization that gives the OK to the commercials for the game probably should have done something to prevent them from being so close.

How do you feel about the lack of pants in the Super Bowl commercials this year?