When Life Gives You Community College...

College commercials are usually done on a standard template: multiracial students in lab coats looking in microscopes, sitting on lawns in pairs, laughing under a sunny sky, walking past a friendly professor, playing some intramural sport, reading in a library, engaged in a lively debate in a common room. They end with a generic message straight from the school's mission statement; something like "Challenging minds. Changing the world." (If you watched any bowl games over the holidays, they always show one per team, and they almost always suck.)

Here's a twisted college commercial. Granted, it's for a community college offering two-year degrees, but I have to give this local institution some credit (zing!) for breaking the mold. It's Bruno meets Dieter in a trying-real-hard-to-be-funny campaign that's been running for about a year. Orlando is full of aspiring (and disappointed actors), many of whom find employment at Disney, or they end up dressed as knights, serving patrons at some sad horse-themed dinner show. While I can't believe this guy got paid very much for his efforts, I'm sure it was more fun than saying, "Wouldst thou like more sweet tea, mi lady?"



After some quick research, the actor playing the fashion dude can be found here. I wonder if Germans and Austrians take offense at this common, comic depiction.

And they did a nice job of tying the website to the commercials. If this was all done in-house, all the better.