Well, folks, let’s toast the end of the year with one final, satisfying roast of the modern advertising industry. Why bother trying to pinpoint the worst TV commercial of 2025 when the entire creative landscape is a sprawling, catastrophic conflagration?
But for sport, we must choose a victim. Our pick today: the Renewal By Andersen commercial, “Trust your home to Andersen.”
This ad is a masterclass in modern mediocrity. It perfectly encapsulates all the malpractice of today’s marketing: the vacuous characters, the desperate, laugh-track-ready slapstick, and the dialogue so painfully idiotic it makes you question if basic competence is now a niche market.
If this is the “state of the art” in late 2025, then watching the industry burn is less harrowing than watching the ads it produces. Pass the popcorn, because this is good.
Below: Renewal By Andersen’s entry into the ESG-compliant Dumb Ad of the Year awards.
The new Golden Rule: obsessed or bust
The commercial begins, as all modern commercials must, with a small gathering of people admiring something completely functional and unremarkable.
The Property Brothers — those ubiquitous HGTV fixtures wheeled out to lend any product a thin veneer of home-improvement authority — open the action, asking, “So, what do you guys think?”
The first response is immediate and perfect: a black woman with an annoyingly bright voice declares, “Oh my gosh! I’m obsessed with those windows.”
Obsessed. With standard residential windows.
The writing here is masterful in its cynicism: Renewal By Andersen knows its consumers are too dull to care about U-factors and double-pane technology, so the company simply scripts an infantile, overwrought emotional reaction and calls it a selling point. (See also: my review of Chevy’s hilariously bad Real People ads.) The only Big Idea here is “Assume the customer is an idiot.”
One of the Brothers attempts to ground the spot in reality: “Andersen makes it easy. They are the number-one trusted window and door brand.”
And that’s the last time we hear anything resembling a legitimate selling point. The rest of the commercial is an exhibition in human failure.
The beta male and the BlackRock scorecard
Now for the required cast of characters, selected for maximum check-box efficiency.
We have a goofy-looking female painter, cast for quirk, who is distracted enough to spray black paint all over the man beside her.
This man, naturally, is the modern standard for masculinity in advertising: the beta-male archetype. He’s a safe, non-threatening white guy, standing next to the black woman who forms the second half of a meticulously arranged mixed-race couple.
As The Cranky Creative has documented, the ad industry has happily abandoned the alpha male — the figure traditionally associated with competence and strength — and replaced him with fumbling, low-T goofballs. The message isn’t subtle: weakness is a desirable trait in men, and competence is apparently toxic.
This is where the amusement ends and the eye-roll begins. This character construction is not about selling windows; it’s about corporate compliance. This entire casting call was likely dictated by the need to satisfy ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) mandates, pushed hard by major investment firms. Yes, I’m talking about BlackRock.
When your creative choices are driven by political scoring for that sweet, sweet ESG money rather than genuine market insight, you get this predictable, creatively suffocated casting that prioritizes DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) representation over human authenticity.
Slapstick so dumb, it hurts
The ad quickly devolves into a parade of painful, desperate gags designed to convince us that windows are worth the risk of serious bodily injury.
A jogging white woman unfunnily runs full-on into a street sign with a jarring CLANK, falling neatly into a garbage can.
Later, we have a man startled by another loud CLANK. The camera reveals that his potato-shaped female coworker has fallen face-first onto a hand truck toting a refrigerator. Her solemn pronouncement, delivered in an overwrought voice: “They’re magnificent.”
This is the creative low point — a lazy, tired attempt at comedy that, as I noted in my ad review, “This Little Caesars ad is supremely unappetizing,” simply depicts the actors as slow, dim-witted nincompoops.
The ubiquitous proxy problem
Let’s return to the Property Brothers, those ubiquitous brand proxies who sell authority through sheer volume of exposure.
Here, they also serve another calculated purpose. They are the closest thing to strong, straight white males the ad dares to feature, yet their “sensible, coupled” aesthetic makes them a perfect, safe proxy for the gay couple demographic. It’s an efficient way to check the diversity box without offending anyone — cynical, creatively inert, and totally characteristic of today’s ad world.
Note that they and the black woman are the only characters not made to look like bumbling, inbred fools.
A world where a lot has gone wrong
One of the Brothers delivers the sign-off, looking at the paint-sprayed man and the refrigerator victim: “You know, in a world where a lot can go wrong, trust your home to Andersen.”
Indeed, a lot has gone wrong.
We have gone from David Ogilvy’s “Big Idea” to a painful, slapstick Carnival of Stupid. We have gone from sharp selling points to mandatory political signaling. We have gone from portraying aspirational competence to celebrating buffoonery.
To the creatives and brand managers who produce this dreck: Thank you. Thank you for making this choice so easy. Every time you greenlight an ad like this, you justify my decision to stand on the sidelines, sipping my coffee, and watching your industry continue its slow, glorious self-immolation.
Cranky Ad Review rating: One concussion-level CLANK out of five.
Merry Christmas, Cranky readers, and I look forward to seeing you in the new year!
Rob Rhode is a former marketing copywriter and founder of The Cranky Creative, a blog so triggering to the LinkedIn elite that he’s been called “divisive” (and worse). He’s never been invited to an industry cocktail party, but his blog has been read by millions and his insights have appeared in major books and newspapers. He’s happy to piss off the right people.
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There is an ad that vies for a tie with this stupid ad – it’s AAA. In that tv ad, people are freaking out because they have a flat tire. They react as if they are witnessing the end of the world. Then some guy (politically correct guy) strolls into frame and says “hey guys, I’ve got AAA.” And everyone relaxes. Every time that thing comes on, I hit mute. And whenever I engage with AAA, I mention that insulting ad.
That AAA ad sounds like a fine companion piece to the Andersen fiasco, thank you for bringing it up!
You’ve hit on a core frustration: the advertising world — and, increasingly, the world itself — operates under the premise that we are all now utterly helpless and incapable of solving the most basic problems. A flat tire isn’t an inconvenience that requires 10 minutes and a rudimentary knowledge of mechanics; in these ads, it’s apparently a life-ending catastrophe requiring a government bailout and a team of specialists to solve.
This mentality perfectly reflects the low-effort people of today who have outsourced all competence and self-sufficiency. They genuinely do freak out over a flat tire because the system has successfully programmed them to believe they can’t handle anything outside of swiping a screen.
I applaud you for hitting mute and, especially, for mentioning the insulting nature of the ad every time you engage with AAA. That’s precisely the kind of low-grade resistance we should all be deploying against these manipulative narratives. Keep up the good work!