You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Homes.com

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
“Um, our new boss is a brilliant man, with lots of well-thought-out, practical ideas. They are ensuring the financial security of this company for years to come … Oh, yes, and their personal hygiene is above reproach.”

Self-deprecating humor is a tricky thing to use in an ad.

On the one hand, a lot of ads try to be funny, ’cause if they make you laugh, not only are you more likely to remember them, but those memories will probably be happy ones. And self-deprecation is one of the most reliable tools in the humorist’s arsenal – yourself is the one thing you can poke fun at where no one can accuse you of taking cheap shots, punching down, or being a hypocrite.

On the other hand, the whole point of an ad is to talk yourself up and make what you have to offer look good. Deliberately making yourself look stupid, insensitive, irresponsible … even if it’s done in the form of a joke, that’s risky.

So this ad, which makes the Homes.com spokesperson/fake CEO look like a smug, entitled douche – a nepo baby who takes over and immediately wastes loads of company money on outlandish vanity projects, without even having the courtesy to show up on time? That’s certainly a choice.

They’ve gotta be gambling that the ridiculousness of it is so over-the-top, it counteracts any negative associations it might create with Homes.com – or at least that any negative associations will be more than made up for by making an entertainingly memorable ad.

I feel like that’s why they hedge their bets at the end there by having Jeff Goldblum explicitly give their seal of approval. That way, folks’ll be like, “Oh, if Goldblum approves, then I guess it’s probably all right. Did you know that guy was in Jurassic Park and Thor: Ragnarok?”