Oh, no Oscar, not again!

This commercial (saying "yes" in a world of "no") made me both annoyed and embarrassed. Annoyed because it's so trite, so overused, so old, and so weak you wouldn't think anyone would use it anymore. And embarrassed because I remember using this terrible cliche myself more than 40 years ago for a Springfield Institution for Savings campaign. The bank was more sophisticated than our admired ad agency and immediately thought the idea was hokey and sent us on our way to come up with something more imaginative, which we did. Since then I have seen this bad idea used dozens of times for any number of products, and it always makes me uncomfortable because it's always, always a bad idea.