You mean the government actually got something right?

Okay, with typical governmental speed, it took the Federal Trade Commission a few years to address the misconceptions thrown around in consumer credit ads, but at least they got the message right in these spots: Everyone by law is entitled to a free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com.

While singing pirates are cute, they mask that little fact by, uh, not mentioning it in the ad or at their site, where, by the way, you can sign up for their credit monitoring service and then discover the small print about that “free” report. (Having used credit monitoring service due to a Blue Cross snafu, I will say a monitoring service and the extras they offered go beyond the free report.)

One thing: While the Apartment spot above gets right to that point, the Irish Jig spot is a little too cute for it's own good and waits to deliver on that message. Because of that, I think people will be fooled into thinking it’s another freecreditreport.com spot and tune it out.

Normally, I hate ads that attack competitors because they’re usually weak. (Think anything by Subway or Quiznos.) Here though, even the parodies are soft on the attack part, they work because the government is actually trying to watch out for consumers instead of some stern warning. (I also have to give them “credit” for making it easy to grab the videos and/or audio clips in a number of ways including a YouTube page. Lotta brands can’t manage that trick.)

Now, if they could just focus on loud commercials next.