Much Hated Canadian Tire Guy Booted From Campaign
Hated for years, the Canadian Tire Guy and his wife, portrayed in hundreds of commercials and loathed, apparently, by every Canadian citizen has been dropped from the campaign. The Canadian Tire Guy seemed to have fallen into that typically emasculated male stereotype we see often in America as well but put out of their misery before it goes on too long. We won't bore you with the details but every media outlet and blogger has derided the guy for years. Canadian Tire nor the actor who play the Tire Guy, Ted Simonett, willelaborate on the change
Comments
The thing about the ads is that they're memorable... I recall reading about them scoring pretty well, despite the backlash against the poor guy.
The ads featuring him usually got the product messaging across pretty well - but he was annoying.
Poor guy. spots were low-budget but I'm not surprised to hear of their effectiveness.
I saw Steven Wright in Vancouver several months ago and an equally low-budget opening act did a parody of the spots. pretty funny.
dm
I think more than the "guy" the trouble was the repetition. First off, the ads were played way too often, something that will help you loathe any advert.
Second, it's always the same script:
"the guy": I see you're having trouble with [insert project here]
friend/neighbour/relative: yeah, it's just taking me so long and I keep having [insert problem here]
"the guy": Well, with this handy [insert Canadian Tire exclusive product here], I make short work of that [insert project here].
f/n/r: wow... that's amazing!
"the guy": Yeah, and not only that, but it does [insert this, that, and the other thing] too!
f/n/r: where can I get one of those?
the voice: [insert product here] is available exclusively at Canadian Tire
[queue annoying jingle] "We'll start with you..."
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So, if you don't find that annoying, your TV must be broken, and you get to make up the script yourself... that could be entertaining!
-kb