DirecTV has replaced its super-weird but super-hilarious and super-effective Rob Lowe ads and has put a new spot with supermodel Hannah Davis and her talking white horse instead.
The move comes after the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division (NAD), which listens to complaints from companies about ads alleged to have false claims, recommended that DirecTV should remove its Rob Lowe ads because its claims were "unsupported." Of particular interest to Comcast, which complained to the NAD about the Rob Lowe ads, is the line "Don't be like this me. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV."
According to the NAD, the specific line, which sounds pretty much like every single hyped up message found in every other commercial, sends a "comparative and unsupported superiority message," and thus the Rob Lowe series has to be scrapped.
The ads feature a handsome, debonair Rob Lowe placed side by side with a variety of his loser alter egos, such as meathead Rob Lowe, creepy Rob Lowe, peaked in high school Rob Lowe, painfully awkward Rob Lowe, and the most recent one, deadbeat Rob Low. The cool, dashing Rob Lowe featured in sleek, upscale environments subscribes to DirecTV and touts all the benefits he gets from it, while all his alter egos subscribe to cable.
The ads have been effective. The Los Angeles Times reports that DirecTV's subscriber base had been dwindling in the third quarter of 2013, when it lost more than 28,000 subscribers. When DirecTV introduced the first Rob Lowe ad in the fall, DirecTV saw more than 149,000 new subscribers for the quarter, a huge increase from the 93,000 new sign-ups during the last quarter of 2013.
But Comcast and the NAD are not having any of it, saying that DirecTV's claims of offering "up to 1080p" of picture quality, better sound and service reliability than cable, and better customer service are not supported by real-life evidence.
"Although humor can be an effective and creative way for advertisers to highlight the differences between their products and their competitors, humor and hyperbole do not relieve an advertiser of the obligation to support messages that their advertisements might reasonably convey," says the NAD.
Among one of the alter egos, the painfully awkward Rob Lowe generated some ire from the Shy Bladder Association, which slams a scene in the ad that has the alter ego having difficulty urinating in a restroom with other people. The lobby group called on DirecTV to pull out the ad for being insensitive to people with paruresis, also known as shy bladder, bashful bladder, or pee fright, but DirecTV refused.
Still, DirecTV says it is now taking the ads off the air, but only because it is its practice to use other ads when previous campaigns have peaked. Also, DirecTV says it reserves the right to air the ads again in the future if it wants to and challenges the NAD's recommendation.
"The various Rob Lowe advertisements are so outlandish and exaggerated that no reasonable consumer would believe that the statements being made by the alter ego characters are comparative or need to be substantiated," says DirecTV.
