Broadcast: 29 August 2012
Program: Good Morning America
Channel: ABC
Conglomerate: Disney
Advertiser: Ashley-Sleep
Owned By: Ashley Furniture Industries
Product: Fancy Mattresses
Passing off actors as real customers may well become a recurring theme in these posts, and that’s just fine. They’re easy to spot, easy to mock, and deeply dishonest. Today’s entrant is an ad for mattresses that begins by having a cheery female voice say:
“Sleep talking with Ashley-Sleep customers about their new mattress.”
That cuts immediately to this guy with the sexy stubble and perfectly lifted hair who is, naturally, not an Ashley-Sleep customer:
Ashley wants us to take its word that these are “Actual customer testimonials” that have merely been “reenacted by paid actors”. First of all, why should we? Secondly, how low of an opinion do you have of your actual customers that you won’t put them in your commercials? Surely a few of them can be put on teevee without the camera lens cracking.
It doesn’t help their credibility that most of these people look like the stock photos that come in picture frames before you put in images of your own ugly ass family:
A romance for the ages, they met at the craft services table twenty minutes before this picture was taken.
Others look like they’re just happy to be working after being passed over for all those dick pill commercials:
Thanks to literally tens of minutes of physical intimacy, they can stand together in a completely natural way that looks neither awkward nor forced.
And all of them are dressed suspiciously alike:
Dresses with front clasped belts are very in this year according to the wardrobe department at the studio we rented for the day.
But the real tell that these “customer testimonials” are less than trustworthy is that many of the quotes on screen don’t match the actors’ dialogue. Take this guy (note the jeans and collared shirt, just like the other guy above):
He says:
“I’ve been waiting all day to go to sleep.”
But the on-screen quote says that he “can’t wait to sleep”. Okay, those are pretty much the same sentiment, but they’re also very obviously not the same quote. One says he can’t wait, the other says he’s been waiting all day. We already know that whatever actual customer may (or may not) have uttered one of those “testimonials” isn’t anywhere near this ad, but now we also know that they’re just making shit up as well.
In short, the people in this ad aren’t real customers, and the quotes that putatively came from real customers are either missing completely or have been buried under professional ad copy. Eat a dick, Ashley-Sleep.
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