How To Pay Your Phone Bill

The first commercial I made for AFN Tokyo

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• funny
• commercial

[ronisizelvr]

I was victim to AFN commercials from '84 to '01, and let me tell you, this is one of the most amusing ones I've ever seen. We know we're not supposed to take you seriously, we know you're poking fun by making it cheesy...that's what makes it so amusing. The commercials that make you roll your eyes are the ones that are trying to be inventive and ending up cheesy (a man in a market holding broccoli like a mic and singing about eating healthy, now that one was a winner, lol). I say keep it up!

[AirForceDJ]

Well, thanks! I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, subjection to AFN commercials is a pain relatively few are unfortunate enough to experience, I just hope that the ones I produce are more bearable than the norm. I don't know if I could ever sing into a vegetable though, hahaha

[DoctorWho1012]

One more thing...there are three reasons people post AFN commercials. 1) They made them, 2) They starred in them, and 3) They want to show everyone why they hate them. When people post a civilian commercial, more than likely they're posting because they liked it. I'm not trying to rain on your parade or anything, but I think military broadcasting should be contracted out to civilian professionals, or it needs to be done by officers who earned a degree in Mass Communications.

[AirForceDJ]

And I'm not convinced a pro organization would do such a better job with our spots. Many of the spots on AFN are, in fact, professionally produced at the cost of many thousands of dollars. While the production values are higher, the spots are still corny. We can't sell with sex, crude humor, or incredible special effects. Most popular commercials fall into one of those categories.

[DoctorWho1012]

You do have a point. Do you know if you can download movies/tv through iTunes when you're stationed overseas? When I was over there iTunes had first come out, and you could buy songs only if your credit card's billing address was in the US. If that's the case for video content, AFN has a huge competitor, and will eventually only serve remote locations and Naval ships.

[AirForceDJ]

You can, although I've never tried it, a few pf my friends in Japan get stuff from there all the time. For now, AFN gets some things faster than iTunes, but iTunes gets more. Be interesting to see how that plays out.

[Bluecanoe42]

Very nice

[AirForceDJ]

I don't think AFN is ever going to be more than a "good enough" organization. The military's job is to kill people and blow stuff up. How I fit into that scheme, I'm not sure at times. But AFN has been "good enough" to get out command info, and that's all we're here for. Contracting out would require a need for top quality, which DoD doesn't have. The mission gets accomplished with crappy spots, so there's no push for pro quality.

[AirForceDJ]

Customer asked me to show everyone on base how to pay, too many delinquencies across the board. After this spot, zero delinquencies. So it was effective,if not the greatest produced thing ever. If I had a casting director,and a list of volunteers,probably would have gone a different path than using myself, but you know how it works.

[DoctorWho1012]

PS-Here's a positive suggestion. Instead of going for the 50s instructional video, why not make a futuristic one? If you're going to give them procedures, make them feel like James Bond. And one easy spot, but also effective, is white text on black--use short, clever sentences--I've seen that on civilian commercials. But I've been in your shoes--it's hard to push yourself to be creative when mediocrity is what they want you to give them. "Quantity over quantity" drove me nuts.