Taco Bell Rings McDonalds' Breakfast Bell

This week’s edition is an ad from Taco Bell that has been getting a lot of press recently:



But did you happen to see the fine print:

How you do get a bunch of random people who happen to have the same name together to eat Taco Bell? Pay them of course. Who wouldn't say you love a Sausage AM Crunchwrap with 710 calories and 46 grams of fat if you gave them a pile of cash? While paid endorsements and actors playing “doctors” is nothing new, this clever one certainly created a lot of buzz online and in the marketplace.

Ancestry.com and Vonage, Fortune and Fame

Here is an ad I saw for Ancestry.com:

The fine print on this one might be hard to read:

“Actor Portrayal”

While plenty of commercials use actors and actresses, you rarely see fine print about it. I guess Ancestry.com felt obligated since they were making claims and faked details. My question is why do they need to pay actors in the first place? Is their product not good enough where they can find a real person who found cool genealogy stuff on their website? Why don’t they just use actual customers like in the Vonage ad below:

And the bonus fine print:

Apparently I missed the memo about being able to appear on TV hocking your favorite stuff. I’m sure the offer for my testimonial for Skittles and Five Guys got lost in the mail or something.