I generally ignore commercials, especially for food chains. They’re far more about marketing than they are about publicizing anything of quality to put in your body. However, there is a commercial campaign that it is so corny, and so horrible, and so mind-numbingly stupid, and so capable of causing violence and mass murder for existing that I can’t ignore them. I am, of course, talking about the radio commercials for Panera Bread.

While I’d like to put an example of their asstastickness here on my site, the commercials are nowhere to be found outside of a radio. Seems even Panera is smart enough to not spread those spots too thin.

The commercials all have the same same format. Two people are enjoying a drink or a snack or a meal at Panera Bread and having a conversation that you would never hear two real people have. Every line a character speaks during the conversation is worked into a narration by a stalkerish, pervy sounding announcer who describes the product(s) being consumed and the chat being chatted. So far I’ve heard the commercial with the guy and his daughter after she has a fender bender in her mom’s car, the one where the mother and daughter discuss online dating and the male prospects in the shop, and a couple other ones I can’t think of right now. The dialog is inane. The narration is ridiculous and creepy. The food and drink doesn’t even sound good.

I’m not sure who these commercials are trying to appeal to. Probably not men in their 30s. However, they are so terrible that while I’m not much of a Panera Bread customer now they they have assured that I’ll likely never be a Panera Bread customer in the future. I don’t want to have a conversation with my daughter about a fender bender over a fucking turkey panini at a fucking Panera Bread, that’s for goddamn sure. Who would?

And rather than make me want to come in and check out all the things the eerie disemboweled voice tells me the characters are eating, these commercials make me want to never step inside a Panera Bread for any reason for fear of killing someone wearing a Panera name tag thanks to the PCSD (Post-Panera Commercial Stress Disorder) I now suffer.

Nice advertising job, Panera.