are you trying hard enough to brighten your smile?

I try not to comment on campaigns currently in market. It's not fair to trash other people's work, not when I know all too well the challenges of getting good work out the door. And I've done my fair share of, let's be honest, crap.

But the Crest 3D Whitestrips spot out there right now is absolutely horrendous. (Okay, not as horrendous as the Days of Our Lives product placement stuff pointed out to me by Chris Seguin, but still.) You know, the "Audition in two weeks, brighten your smile," spot.

The acting is at the level of a porn movie or, more charitably, a high school play. But the editing choices are ghastly, truly awful, as evidenced most brutally by the wink to camera at the end. It plays like an SCTV parody. It feels so programmed, such a transparent execution of the brief, that I almost wonder if there was a creative team involved at all. (And I know there was, I know they're cringing, I know there's a kernel of a great concept in the spot that got watered down and focus grouped to death.)

I just saw the second phase of the campaign, where the same woman is getting married and yet we're not supposed to notice – they've even redubbed her in an effort to cover their tracks.

There's so little respect for the audience in this work that I almost don't consider it advertising. It's simply a statement of product features that's been shot to look like an ad. And as much as P&G is, well, kind of a successful company, it doesn't get much more depressing than that.