This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/crank_yankers/index.jhtml

I love how seriously everyone takes themselves in the behind the scenes piece.

CGI blinking eyes? Seriously??Someones got too much money to play with.

:)

I watched the ad. Got nothing from it. It wasn’t funny, cute, clever or anything. I didn’t even get that the ad was supposed to highlight their customer service.

Then I watched the making of to try to understand what impressed you about the ad as I got nothing from it. I was impressed by their effort to create something. I still didn’t get what that something was supposed to be and the ad still makes no sense to me.

Reminds me to the Superbowl ads this year. Everybody makes such a big deal out of them and so much money is spent on them. Yet 99% of them I still come away thinking “That was dumb. Who were they again? What where they trying to sell?”.

This ads seems like yet another example of someone trying to be clever but failing miserably at it.

I liked it.

I thought it was great.

Eric,

Are we talking about the same ad here? Here is the link just in case http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOpWDR8MZ0

It made me smile and that counts for me

I have watched it four times in a row. It is bloody cool!

I agree it was an ineffective ad.

All the “what was that about? Who was this for?” can be solved with a simple voice-over at the end that reads what is written on the box. Something like “ZAPPOS! Happy to help. 24/7” in a voice similar to Bill Curtis from those AT&T Laptop Connect ads.

People are too busy digesting what just happened in the live-action ad to be bothered to switch to reading the ad’s actual message.

TV ads have to focus on text from the beginning if they want people to read, that’s just how it is.

This was hilarious. I loved the “screaming roommate” and the detail of Zappo employees looking over the cube. Plus, Daryl.. man, “Stalking” Daryl just became the new “It’s our son” Gary.

I love Zappos! I love puppets! I love videos! Therefore I thought this was pretty cool!

Puppets are creepy to me. If i ever see that phone agent looking down at me as I wake up at night, it’s fair to say I’d be experiencing “a fast trip straight down the ladder, right to the primal fear, right to the base anger.” (quote from a very good movie…) People at zappos are very real… I think they should these people instead -> that’s where the real juice is. A puppet, even though it speaks an “actual” dialogue, is a representation, not the real thing. Isn’t zappos all about authenticity? (but overall the add is very good)

I think the ad is well done and clever, but suffers from one problem which completely turned me off. It’s not original.

As Adam Boozer pointed out above, it’s a blatant rip-off of Crank Yankers. Same style, attitude, format and sense of humor.

When I watched it, I didn’t think of Zappos, I thought of Adam Carolla. I’m pretty sure, that’s not what the ad agency had in mind.

I loved it! I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about this one. He told me it sucked big time, that it was the worst one he ever saw.

I completely disagree with him. It is quite smart and quite cool ad. Different from what we are used to see… I’m getting sick of people following the “train” just because everyone does one thing, everyone keeps doing it.

We need this fresh new smart ideas from time to time.

Loved the ad!

Zappos knew it was Crank Yankers themed, as you can see from their blog tags.

http://blogs.zappos.com/tags/crank-yankers

Ha, these are great. AnY company that can poke fun at themselves is cool in my book. A quick, informative interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh at SXSW . http://bit.ly/mbsxsw

But here’s the $64K question: will this ad make you pay Zappos’ exorbitant prices to fund that great customer service (assuming you aren’t already)? I know a ton of people who know exactly who Zappos is, and I know only one person who has ever bought something from them. I guess I never really understood the model – make people pay for overnight shipping for something they already have accepted that they won’t get today and they’ll be cool with the price. It seems to work for them, but it always seemed fishy to me.