Armstrong & Getty, the morning talkers on KSTE (650 AM), are known for going on outrageous rants. Today's was a particularly good one.
They were talking about an annoying television ad that, while not new, certainly is getting a lot of attention lately. It's for a product called "HeadOn" - a headache-relief gel stick that you rub on your noggin.
Armstrong (or was it Getty?) was riffing on the cheesy and unintentionally comical nature of the ad, which features a woman with a pleasing expression rubbing the stick on her head and saying three times in succession, in almost a monotone: "HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead...."
Slate magazine's Seth Stevenson was the first to pick up on the simplistic genius of the ad. "With this one 10-second spot, the makers of HeadOn have torn down all the pretenses that have gummed up the advertising industry for years," Stevenson wrote. "Production values? Persuasion? Emotion? Humor (of the intentional kind)? These are stalwarts of the old, outmoded advertising paradigm. The new, head-on (or HeadOn) approach holds that advertising is about blunt force."
Quipped Armstrong: "It's a great product, yeah. But how do you apply it again?"
Fork over $5.24 at Walgreens and find out, Jack.
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