Dick Move, The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel has some new app for Android that tells you when it’s raining or whatever, and to help promote it they worked with an ad agency named iris to create this commercial. From the commercial’s YouTube page:

To dramatize the Weather Channel’s new Android app that alerts users down to the exact minute of impending weather changes, iris developed 15- and 30- second spots in which we soaked unsuspecting travelers in a place originally designed to protect you from the elements: a bus shelter.

Now, I am going to take their word on this and assume that the people getting soaked in the commercial are in fact “unsuspected travelers,” and not, oh I don’t know, willing participants who signed releases beforehand and are just being portrayed as victims of a cruel prank as a way to wring every last drop of publicity out of The Weather Channel’s advertising budget. Why am I willing to be so gullible? Simple. Because I want to believe the pitch meeting for this stupid app — which tells you the same thing a cursory glance at the clouds will — went exactly like this:

Iris Representative: … so that’s our pitch. We soak people at the bus stop, one guy has an umbrella, bing bang boom “The Weather Channel.”

Low-ranking Weather Channel Junior Executive: [meekly] Uh, correct me if I’m wrong here, but don’t lots of people use their cell phones and Kindles at the bus stop to pass the time? And couldn’t this idea fry all those devices? I mean, these people already riding the bus. Don’t you think they have it rough enough?

[long pause]

Weather Channel CEO: F-ck ‘em.

(Via AdWeek)