July 02, 2008

Thank God It's Over

If you're a regular here at TAC, you know that since last December we've been railing against a series of web films created for the Ritz-Carlton (see Ritz Bits, Web Films vs Bagels, This Film Is Rated T For Torture, and Worst Of The Web.)

Well the third and final film has been released and it's every bit as awful as the other two.

First, it's in black and white, so you know it's "art."

It features three of the most repulsive and phony cardboard characters you can imagine. In the unlikely event that monstrosities like these three could actually exist in the real world, they would never have made it out of high school in one piece. Their roles in this "movie" are to look arch and drop brand names.

Why Ritz-Carlton thinks anyone in his right mind would want to go someplace where creeps like this hang out is beyond me.

The movie ends by ripping off a 2o-year-old gag from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

These web films are an abomination and a perfect example of how "brand babble" has infected the marketing industry. These films tell us nothing useful about Ritz-Carlton. But I'm sure they were sold to R-C as "branding." In fact, the only thing they do for the Ritz-Carlton brand is make regular customers like me think they are alarmingly out of touch with reality and shamefully wasteful.

The marketing director should be fired for this hideous misuse of money.

As luck would have it...
I spent last night at the Ritz-Carlton in Denver. Thankfully, their real customers are a lot pleasanter than the obnoxious weasels in their web films.

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