I have yet to see any rants about the horrible Pepto-Bismol ad that has been running for a few weeks. The thrust of the ad is the range of digestive discomfort that the product can address. It shows a range of people in an office with various complaints, and then morphs into a dance number where the people stand in a line and chant/sing the different symptoms, with each one in turn “owning” one of the symptoms.

There’s just no point during the day when I want to hear people shouting out a sequence of phrases like “nausea, vomiting, excess gas, diarrhea, bloating, burping” over and over again. I’m not sure that’s the exact sequence, but you get the idea. The ad makes me recoil, and that can’t possibly be good for the product? Are they trying to induce the horror of the complaints so you’ll want to have their relief?

What makes it a thousand times worse is that the office workers do a little dance while chanting these symptoms, the dance itself being heavily inspired by mime. The lowest point is when the diarrhea sufferer uses her hands to press her butt-cheeks together, further indicating the urgency of her diarrhea, that she is attempting to stem the impending tide of feces that will flow out of her.

And really, when is the time of day you want to see that image on your television set? For most of us, never.