Archive for ‘Advertising’

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May 7, 2008

Some Interesting Things

Here’s a comprehensive answer to a question I asked many a post ago: what happens if you routinely screw up your recycling?

When loads of plastic are dumped on a recycling facility’s floor, the sorting fun begins. Workers often start by picking through the piles in search of obviously discordant items-kiddie play sets, lawn furniture, clothing mannequins. They also scan for plastic mounds that are drenched in nonrecyclable trash, such as food slurries or medical waste.

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Taylor Clark attempts to dispel the myth of the obnoxiously condescending vegetarian by penning an obnoxiously condescending article:

Those of us who want to avoid the social nightmare have to hide our vegetarianism like an Oxycontin addiction, because admit it, omnivores: You know nothing about us. Do we eat fish? Will we panic if confronted with a hamburger? Are we dying of malnutrition? You have no clue.

In all seriousness, I think vegetarianism is admirable (although PETA, which runs ads that objectify women in order to promote its agenda of giving humanity to animals, can suck it). But I’ve never understood my vegetarian friends’ complaints of the difficulty of finding anything to eat. I’m not even remotely a vegetarian, and I’d estimate that 90% of my diet is cheese, bread and sugar.

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I am nothing if not a lover of routine – in fact, my behavior is so habitual that it borders on insane. Like many writers, I find that I am unable to be creative at all if I don’t build being creative into a fairly rigid routine. According to this article, the important thing is to change up your habits:

. . . it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Not long ago, I leafed through a book (can’t remember the title) that was basically a longer version of the above article. The book’s author advised that, to free up creative thinking and combat brain atrophy (and possibly Alzheimer’s), you should constantly be trying to surprise your own brain by doing something jolting – walking a different way to work, writing with the wrong hand, using the opposite hand to do different tasks, performing daily activities in a different order than usual, and so forth. Hmm. Maybe I should build breaking my routine into my routine.

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Lindsay Beyerstein responds to Thomas Friedman on subprime mortgages:

Earlier generations weren’t more virtuous because they had less debt. Their dollars bought more. They were more likely to have steady jobs with benefits, including employer-subsidized incentives to save . . . Americans have always valued hard work–and nothing has changed. In the USA, the average worker clocks more hours than anywhere else in the industrialized world.

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A very brief history of illegal immigration:

Chinese exclusion invented something like the concept and business of modern illegal immigration.

(Related, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand misspelled words.)

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And finally, this is way cooler than missed connections: if you live in New York, this guy might draw you…especially if you hang out much at the Taco Bell on 14th.  (via Kottke)

Posted in Advertising, Food, Health, New York City, People, Politics, Science | 2 Comments »

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April 27, 2008

Interesting Stuff This Week

The Morning News’ always entertaining John Warner and Kevin Guilfoile discuss Obama’s bitter comment:

Bitterness is not why people in rural areas “cling to their guns.” Bitterness is why people in rural areas, just like everywhere else, cling to beer.

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Patriotism is a hot topic lately, and if you are one of those people who don’t understand why anybody wouldn’t love America, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution spells out eight of his reasons, before going on to say:

On the brighter side, America has a decent economic track record, the Solow model does matter (try living and earning in countries with poor Solow indicators), America remains the world’s leading innovator, and most Americans — at least those not in prison or on drugs — can expect a bright future. It’s not as if I’m pushing the future economic prospects of Suriname.

I think that for a lot of those patriots who fail to comprehend anti-American sentiment, the point quoted above is so important as to render nearly meaningless the eight points above it, and they think that anybody who doesn’t love America must not be sufficiently aware of its economic opportunities.

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Which makes sense, since our brains apparently equate profit with praise:

“If the hierarchy is fixed forever, then it’s good to be the top monkey.”

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Speaking of economic opportunities (and the lack thereof), Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber discusses the deficit model of poverty:

The stresses that accompany poverty (for those who do not choose it, which is everyone except nuns, monks, and the odd saint) are often very demanding and sometimes overwhelming – they make it harder for people to make good long-term decisions and stick to them, sometimes because there just are no good long term options. So yes, if you like, I do think that poverty creates deficits. But then, I don’t see why we should complain about, or try to get rid of, it, unless it is because it creates deficits.

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As to America’s Problem with Prisoners, we learned this week that one out of every 100 American adults is now in jail (there’s one huge chunk of the population who won’t be voting in the primaries):

“In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States,” Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in “Democracy in America.”

No more.

Also, note in the above article that San Marino has the lowest prison population – just one (I assume) guy. I would absolutely love to interview San Marino’s sole prisoner and see how (again, I assume) he feels about holding this distinction.

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On Talking Points Memo Café, Daniel Levy has five things to say about Israel’s strike on the Syrian facility (and why we’re discussing it now), including this:

So here is a delicious and rare moment of Israeli-Syrian agreement: : we both want to talk, the nature of the Syria-Israel issue is that we both need US facilitation, the Bush Administration is not interested and so, we will have to wait.

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Meanwhile, some woman let her nine-year-old take the subway home alone, hoping that everybody would talk about it, and everybody has obliged. I get her point that people hover over their children too much, but here’s the thing: she didn’t turn him lose in 99.99% of America. She turned him lose in the NYC subway. Which is the strangest, most congested, unhygienic, freak-filled hell portal in the entire U.S.A. I don’t even like to mosey in the subway. Honestly, I don’t know why people still insist on viewing Manhattan as a normal, residential area. I realize that it was one once upon a time, but nowadays, Manhattan is Disney World for CEOs and aspiring artists. It’s a weird, artificial, overcrowded, unreal place, and there’s no reason to try and navigate it daily, unless you have business here, or you’re trying to make it in some field where you need to be a stone’s throw from everybody else in that field. It’s sure as heck not a place to send your nine-year-old out stumbling around getting in everybody’s way. I don’t care if people’s nine-year-olds are supervised or not, as long as they’re in Yonkers where they belong.

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Moving on to my favorite arena of outrage (women getting the shit-end), Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick discusses the recent Senate action regarding the Supreme Court’s Lilly Ledbetter verdict:

So, 42 members of the U.S. Senate blocked a bill that would allow victims of gender discrimination to learn of and prove discrimination in those rare cases in which their employers don’t cheerfully discuss it with them at the office Christmas party. And the reasons for blocking it include the fact that women are not smart enough to file timely lawsuits, not smart enough to avoid being manipulated by vile plaintiffs’ lawyers, not smart enough to know when they are being stiffed, and-per John McCain-not well-trained enough in the first place to merit equal pay.

So how dumb are we? Well, if we don’t vote some people who actually respect women into Congress soon, we just may be as dumb as those senators think.

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Speaking of women continuing to stick their fingers in their ears and hum, the wide world of advertising continues on its merry, woman-bashing way. The latest: one of Tom Ford’s ads has been banned in Italy. Here’s the ad in question (I don’t really have much of an opinion about this ad in particular, but I do hate Tom Ford in general):

Tom Ford\'s dumb ad.

It’s hilarious to me that Italy – Italy – would ban anything for being offensive to women. That aside, upon first seeing this photo, I anticipated that men and women to the left and right would rush to gasp at how ridiculous it is that a photo devoid of explicit T&A could possibly offend anyone. Generally when porn-in-advertising debates arise, most commentators refuse to address symbolic, implied, or even overt misogyny in advertising, preferring instead to focus on how people are prudish about sex, as if plain old sex was the point, rather than violent and/or degrading sexual content aimed entirely at portraying women as submissive to all manner of victimization. And I was anticipating reading an argument along those lines when I clicked on a link to this blog post, but rather, I was treated to a barrage of Italian ads that make the Tom Ford one look positively romantic. Specifically, check out this Dolce & Gabbana ad:

Gang rapes are pretty.

Now, from time to time, I’ve decided to compile a list of all products and companies I refuse to buy from because their advertisements are misogynist. I’ve always had to go back on this resolution, because inevitably my list grew so long so fast that I was left unable to buy much anything but Dove products (and for all I know, the people who own Dove likely own other lines that run down women as well). This post just illustrates how difficult it is not to support the objectification of women with your hard-earned pennies: over here in the States, high fashion shits on women in tastefully hypocritical, closeted ways, but apparently in Italy, they have no such scruples and Dolce & Gabbana can go ahead and run a full-out airbrushed gang rape. It’s not like I buy designer labels, but I don’t always remember to NOT buy them with sufficient conviction. I should have to look at this ad every day for the rest of my life to remind myself to never, ever, even for a second even think about paying a freaking penny to the fashion industry. I mean, I actually really like Dolce & Gabbana’s dresses: had I gotten rich suddenly and had an event to attend, I could possibly have bought one without ever knowing they had glorified gang rape to sell fashion. It just goes to show you how hard it is not to pay people for actively insulting you, for celebrating actual violence against you as SEXXY. You must exercise constant, international vigilance.

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Finally, Foreign Policy released its list of the top 100 public intellectuals this week, and bloggers on all the sites I habitually read have reacted in outrage at the anti-intellectualism of most of these intellectuals. They regret the omission of dozens of more apt choices I’ve never heard of. I can’t follow the debate over this. I do know who a lot of people on FP’s list are, but I don’t know enough about them (or the people they’ve edged out) to be outraged at their inclusion. And that, really, perfectly sums up my intellectual acumen: I am smart and informed enough to read people who know what’s up, but not smart or informed enough to know what’s up myself.

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, New York City, People, Politics, Science | 2 Comments »

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March 31, 2008

I Hate Ads VI

Obviously, the big news in Olive Garden advertising lately is that one of their spots features a man saying, “I’m in the mood for something different,” to his Olive Garden server. Which is rather like moving into a gated subdivision because you want to live in a diverse community. But less frequently remarked upon is an earlier spot for the same restaurant, in which a server asks a customer, “How was that?” And he replies, “It really hit the spot.” And everyone at the table bursts into laughter, as if he’d made a joke. But “it really hit the spot” is not a joke on any level. It’s just a comment.

This is actually what I like to refer to as ‘secretary humor,’ because it’s the type of humor largely occurring in office environments among bored and excruciatingly polite administrative professionals, where somebody will make some banal observation and everyone will burst into forced laughter as if it had, in fact, been a witticism. “That donut was so good, maybe I’ll eat two!” Bwaggh-har-har-har!!! “Maybe I just won’t come in on Monday.” Waaaaa-haaa-haaa!!!! “What if I took a little nap in my chair here?” Girl, you are a SCREAM!!! Or the ever popular, “You are Too Funny,” response, which works after anything at all:

“Oh, I didn’t pick up the phone in time.”
“You are Too Funny.”

“It’s only three o’clock?”
“You are Too Funny.”

“Wait, what was I in the middle of?”
“You are TOO FUNNY!!!!!”

Obviously, “You are Too Funny,” is code for “Please, God, just kill me where I stand.”

Speaking of humor that is not, NYC is plastered with posters promoting some movie that feature in large type, the sentence, “You DO look fat in those jeans, Sarah Marshall.” Now. I understand that at one time, some dude first made the observation that frequently, women will ask their boyfriends if they look fat in a pair of jeans. This is meant to be humorous, because, no matter what the accurate answer to that question is, the fellow so addressed can only reply, “no.” Or, less charitably, it is meant to be humorous because the woman looks fat not because of the jeans, but because she is fat. While this observation might have been marginally amusing the first time or two that it was pointed out (which is debatable), surely endless reiteration in everything from Twix ads to sitcoms to stand-up routines and on and on and on has long since wrung from this “joke” whatever comedic potential it originally possessed.

Yet somehow, some film that is obviously spending a shit ton on marketing believes not only that this “joke” is hilarious, but that it is so universally and unceasingly hilarious that prominent featuring of it alone is enough to attract all and sundry to their movie in droves. This blows my mind.

Moving on, in the category of ads that dispense with reality altogether, we have the Walmart ad, in which a lot of Walmart employees open a store at something like 4 a.m., dancing and singing in their pristine big box environment to the strains of “Dancing in the Moonlight,” and a voiceover explains that while you sleep cozily in your beds, underpaid and uninsured Walmart employees are cheerily preparing for your arrival by mopping, stocking and Windexing the entire store predawn, and Could Not Be More Thrilled About It. On the other side of the economic gap, we have the Audi ad, where the voiceover discusses privilege burnout: “You will grow up in this mansion, you will go to one of these three schools (Harvard, Yale or Princeton), you will own homes on these two coasts, Yawn – AUDI!! Consider the cycle broken! …Not the cycle of inherited wealth, of course. But the cycle of spending Daddy’s money on cars other than Audi.”

Speaking of over-consumption, I love the McDonald’s ad where the voiceover talks about how a certain burger is so big that, while the man consuming it will still be able to cram a super-sized fries and Coke in on top of it, he’ll have to stop at one ketchup packet. You can almost hear the tortured pitch meeting that came up with this ad: “How do we emphasize that this burger is monstrously huge, but not suggest that the person forgo spending money on a couple thousand more fried calories on the side? Hey, condiments are free…” Meanwhile, in the McD ads for Girls, lithesome women cavort ecstatically over some sad, wilted little salads. McDonald’s really has all its bases covered.

Which brings us back to my favorite refrain: the stupidity of women’s advertisements. This month, there’s yet another ridiculous birth control pill ad out. I speak of the ad in which the pharmacist tells a woman – after he’s already filled her prescription – that she might have to get a blood test to use that pill. The woman’s face falls in dismay, and an adjacent birth-control-buying customer reacts in shock and indignation as well. They both just can’t freaking believe this. No matter that she already has the damn prescription in her hands, so unless a miniature doctor pops out of the bag and demands to do the procedure before he hands over the dial, she’s probably in the clear. No matter that the pharmacist doesn’t in any way explain why she might need one, or when, or under what circumstances. She is simply shocked – SHOCKED – to hear that in some undefined scenario for some unspecific reason having vaguely to do with a prescription she’s already filled, somebody in the medical field might at some point advise her to have a blood test. Which is OUTRAGEOUS.

And while I can’t think of an appropriate segue, let me just say that Kohler is becoming for me the new Twix, in that it is currently running a series of ads aimed entirely at men by running down women for no reason whatsoever. Witness the ad wherein a man observes a hot lady plumber (because those exist, right?) and immediately proceeds to throw all manner of things into his toilet to plug it up, so he’ll get to meet her. Which is fine. But then, just before we see the logo, his wife walks by and looks at him funny. OH! He’s a married man who wants to hit on the sexy plumber! Now, there’s really no reason for him to be a married man for the commercial to work – he could just be a single guy. But why stop at merely amusing when with one simple beat more you can reach full out offensive, right Kohler? Well done.

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More:

I Hate Ads V

I Hate Ads IV

I Hate Ads III

I Hate Ads II

I Hate Ads

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WARNING: Feminist Digression!!!

Incidentally, this post perfectly sums up a sentiment I’ve been trying and failing to articulate ever since I turned 12 years old:

Femininity, in fact, can’t even be practiced without stuff (which is one way of debunking the argument that it is an inherited sex trait). It is simply not possible for a woman without makeup and deodorant and lingerie and kitten heels and diet pills and clothes without pockets and anti-wrinkle cream that promises “glowing skin” and self-help books explaining the best ways to suck up to men and jewelry and razors and tweezers and lemon-scented cleaning products and boxes of Lean Cuisine in the freezer — all stuff that must be bought — to be fully feminine.

If you’re a woman, you’re a woman, and that’s that. You can’t be less of a woman because you don’t buy enough shit to trick yourself out in. While it might sound shocking today, men were in fact able to ID a woman as such way back when both sexes were costumed in identical bits of animal hide. Otherwise, none of us would be here today. So relax, ladies, and spend your hard-earned pennies on travel and theatre tickets.

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, Humor, Rants, Television | 7 Comments »

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February 7, 2008

I Hate Ads V

With the holidays and now Valentine’s Day, we’re being treated to the usual explosion of Kay’s and Jared’s ads. There is really nothing creepier than these ads, which illustrate relationships between the sexes as ventures in which the entire families of middle-aged women (who still inexplicably seem to live at home) wait with baited breath (usually in their suburban split-levels) for timid men to show up and present unattractive diamonds purchased at mall chain stores as tokens of their esteem. I wish these retailers would launch a more realistic ad campaign in which men ‘go to Jared’ for disinterested, manipulative strippers, and resentful, kept mistresses. Along the same lines, we have an ad where a man and woman are driving around in a Lexis or something, holding hands all lovey-dovey, and then the guy slips a diamond pendant into the woman’s hand. Well, that’s fine, but there’s something crass about the way he does it, and I’m not sure what exactly makes it that way. Maybe it’s that he turns a gesture of casual affection into a commercial transaction (which is really what all these ads do), but I just keep thinking that if a guy slipped a diamond into my hand like that, I’d probably feel I’d been insulted.

Continuing on with fashion-based materialism, I think it’s odd that ads for Old Navy and Kohl’s have gotten so sexy. When most clothing ads seem to be swinging towards featuring real people with real bodies wearing clothes in real-life situations (and I’m thrilled about that, by the way), the ads for these two retailers are getting ever more old school, with attractive, stick-thin people in their early 20s cavorting around in pristine environments. It’s especially strange, because these two retailers are budget chains aimed at families – the most “real people”-directed of all the retailers advertising right now.

Another new trend in advertising: viewers being asked to identify with total jerks. Two ads in this category include the freecreditreport.com ad in which what appears to be an 18-year-old boy sings a crappy jingle, about how his new 18-year-old girl-bride turned out to have bad credit and now he wishes he had stayed single. He sings this in a mocking tone right in front of her and some friend of theirs, while she stomps around and tries to ignore his immature baiting. What a dick! The other one is the anti-drug ad in which a young girl does a little rap about how this one dude in her neighborhood just sits on the stoop and smokes weed all day, and will probably amount to nothing. “I wonder if he’ll ever leave?” she concludes, standing right in front of him. “I wonder if you’ll ever shut the hell up,” I keep waiting for him to scream.

Speaking of annoying people, I often think to myself when I watch ads featuring children that there is just a hopeless divide between people who find certain things children do adorable, and people who find those same things obnoxious as all get-out. I really don’t understand what some people find cute or winning. If, for example, I were the woman shopping with the small girl in the PediaSure ad who keeps saying, ‘I don’t like broccoli, I don’t like chicken,’ with a whiny little puss on her face, my reaction would almost certainly be, ‘Well, I don’t like YOU, stupid, but you don’t hear me going on about it!’ While it’s possible that motherhood would suddenly cause me to find such childish displays irresistible, still I like to think I’d always recognize good reason for a smack when I saw it.

Two other quick things: first of all – boy, let’s all avoid the warm, sexual taste of Disaronno! Everything about this ad is both hilarious and deeply unsettling. Unsettling because, is it just me, or do both the man and woman in this ad slightly miss being actually attractive because there’s something a little bit off about their appearances? Almost like they’re both in drag. …Whoa. If that’s actually true, this is the most ingenious ad I’ve ever seen, and I apologize for not getting it before. (And while I’m on the topic of comically overt liquor ads: Come on, Bacardi. Enough with the mortar and pestle already – are you serious?)

And secondly, “use your period for good,” is a really, really unfortunate tagline that creates a most unpleasant mental image. I sincerely hope that no one is ever actually moved to “use their period” for anything at all.

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More:

I Hate Ads VI

I Hate Ads IV

I Hate Ads III

I Hate Ads II

I Hate Ads

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, Food, Rants, Television | 2 Comments »

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January 30, 2008

When Will the HPV Vaccine Be Fashionable?

I had the opportunity the other day to leaf through the February issue of Marie Claire. I never read women’s magazines (except every now and then when I’m stoking an eating disorder and stockpiling ‘thinspiration’), and as usual, momentarily glancing at one completely reassured me that I am entirely correct to avoid them, and surely everyone reading this blog will understand my standpoint on this issue, even if they do not agree with it, so I will spare us all the tiresomeness of going on about it at length.

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[...Except I must just say that, for the same reason I had occasion to peruse Marie Claire, I also had a briefer encounter with the January issue of Vogue, which, along with other travesties, contains (near the back) a photo of a model holding a bag designed by Richard Prince. The bag is printed with a number of jokes, all based on the classic ‘my wife is so dumb and/or ugly that...' formula (the blurb refers to these as ‘witticisms'), and retails for $2,720. Looking at it, I thought to myself that perhaps my sex fully deserves all the ill-treatment and inequality it suffers under, just for being so unbelievably foolish and masochistic as to thoroughly embrace (and eagerly line up to swallow whole) every ridiculous demand and pronouncement of an industry that exists solely for the purpose of milking every last dime out of every last woman by the (inexplicably) effective means of: convincing her she is ugly, vapid and worthless; encouraging her to desire nothing so much as her own utter and complete disenfranchisement and objectification; and praising her for valuing nothing so highly as vanity, materialism and greed.]

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There! Aren’t you glad I resisted the urge to succumb to a full-out hysterical rant?

Except don’t breathe a sigh of relief, as all this was merely a prologue to what really pissed me off: tucked away in the back of the (pointless and embarrassing) Marie Claire issue in question is a brief article by Julia Scirrotto describing the trial of a time she had getting her gyno to vaccinate her with Gardasil.

Here’s a link to her article (which I had to search for, as it certainly wasn’t featured on the main MC page, and of the general categories listed on the main page, the closest thing to health is ‘fat’).

To be fair, it sounds like Scirrotto just has a particularly shitty gynecologist. Still, from what I’ve seen, the promotional campaign for this vaccine has been limited to Gardasil’s own television spots featuring teenage girls (and I haven’t seen one of those in quite some time, come to think of it). Looking at Wikipedia, it appears state governments aren’t exactly rushing to make vaccinating students mandatory.

According to the CDC website, in the U.S., about 5,000 people per year die of illness resulting from Hepatitis-B infection, and in 2006, about 3,700 women were expected to die from cervical cancer. In 2003 about 73,000 people were infected with Hep-B, and every year about 6.2 million people get HPV. I see no reason why cities and schools shouldn’t make vaccinating for HPV as big a priority as they made vaccinating for Hep-B several years ago. But maybe they’re getting around to it. I hope so.

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, Health | 1 Comment »

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December 5, 2007

I Hate Ads IV

I finished another (short) spell of working yesterday, so it is now time to park it in front of the television and bitch about stupid ads again.

First up is an ad I haven’t seen in awhile, but loved so much I just have to mention it: the Smuckers jam ad, where two little boys in some podunk town wander through an orchard.

‘Why doesn’t anyone ever ask me what I want to be when I grow up?’ muses one child.

‘Because your name’s Smuckers,’ explains his friend. ‘So, everyone knows what you’re going to do: you’re going to make jam.’

‘I love jam,’ the first child murmurs, resignedly.

And the voiceover explains that when you live in Podunk and your last name is Smuckers, you have no choice in the matter and no options at all. You’re going to make jam all your life, and that’s it.

I don’t think the creators of this ad meant for it to leave the viewer feeling terribly depressed for the Smuckers boy, but then again, maybe it’s a really effective ad: I sort of want to go buy a caseload of jam out of pity. Maybe if we all buy enough jam, Smuckers can retire early enough to finally fulfill his childhood dream of being an archaeologist.

Sort of similar to this ad is one for a Thomas the Tank Engine board game. The ad depicts a plastic Thomas the Tank being manipulated by a small boy. All the time, Thomas’s recorded voice comments helplessly on his total lack of control over (or understanding of) his own life: ‘I’m going through a tunnel. Oh, no, I’m not. I’m going backwards. What? Why am I going backwards? Into the station again. No, out of the station. Oh, hell, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m just circling and circling, controlled by some unseen hand from above. I have no free will and no say in the matter. I’m doomed to fruitlessly circle this track for all eternity, never reaching any destination! God is surely some sadistic toddler.’

Poor, poor Thomas the Fatalist Tank Engine.

In the category of imprecisely or arbitrarily worded ads, we have the Betty Crocker warm delights ads, in which the voiceover declares, ‘Chocolate is the eighth wonder, warm chocolate the ninth!’ What? The eighth wonder of what? Now, it is true that we’re all familiar with the phrase ‘the seven wonders of the world.’ But only within the context of those seven wonders being fascinating man-made or natural structures from various epochs (ancient, modern, etc.). What the hell does that have to do with chocolate? Did they just pick some random phrase that would sound familiar, regardless of context? In that case, why not ‘if nice guys finish last, chocolate finishes first,’ or ‘ready, aim, chocolate,’ or ‘chocolate is the eighth day of the week, warm chocolate the ninth.’ What would have made infinitely more sense is, ‘chocolate is the eighth deadly sin, warm chocolate the ninth.’ This would have kept the “8″ and “9″ theme that the advertisers seem (for some reason) attached to, but worked much better, because chocolate is often described by people as sinful or indulgent, whereas it is absolutely never described as architecturally impressive.

On to the CiCi’s buffet ad, where a pinched-looking woman is shown eyeing the pizza buffet, and the voiceover says something like, ‘The CiCi’s pizza buffet: a decadent world of gastronomic delight. But not for you. You shower with a loofah. Your indulgence: the salad bar.’

Okay. I get that the loofah line is thrown in there to illustrate that this woman is an obsessively self-controlled, disciplined person, who would never cut loose and go hog wild on some pizza. But it doesn’t work for two reasons, the first being that showering with a loofah is not a stereotypical example of being way Type A. Using a loofah just means you want soft elbows. A better example would be, ‘You dust behind the sofa,’ or ‘You floss twice a day,’ or ‘You always wear your seatbelt/organize your sock drawer/color-code your groceries/file all your receipts,’ and on and on and on.

The other problem with the loofah example is that it is only one example, making it sound less like an example, and more like a direct cause. If you say, ‘You shower with a loofah, pay your bills promptly and always tuck in your shirt. Your indulgence: the salad bar.’ That means, ‘You are an uptight control freak. You wouldn’t let yourself eat much more than salad.’ But if you stop with the loofah example, that sounds more like, ‘You shower with a loofah, and so you are unable to eat pizza, because a known side-effect of loofah-use is an allergic reaction to cheese.’

Finally, one last thing, for the holiday season:

‘Raise your hand if you think we should pick out a few more toys!’

Raise your hand if you think this kid should spend Christmas volunteering at a Thai orphanage!

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More:

I Hate Ads VI

I Hate Ads V

I Hate Ads III

I Hate Ads II

I Hate Ads

Posted in Advertising, Food, Television | 5 Comments »

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October 9, 2007

I Hate Ads III

When it comes to ads for women’s products, just in general, this is how I picture the creative team’s meeting:

“Okay. We need this spot to appeal to women. Does anyone have any theories about what women might do?”

“Uh, sit around and talk to each other?”

“Shop?”

“Date men?”

“Okay, great ideas, everyone. I, too, think women must do these sorts of things. Does anyone have any clue as to what women might talk about when they are together?”

“I think they mostly must talk about the fact that they’re women.”

“And that they wear women’s clothes, and use women’s products!”

“And men.”

“Great! Yes, I also assume that women mostly discuss the fact that they are women. I know that if I were a woman, I would never get over the shock of it, and would talk about it all the damn time. Let’s make this ad be women sitting around talking about that they’re women, and so they are able to wear women’s things and also sleep with men.”

Because that’s the only possible explanation I can think of for women’s ads:

“You’re women, girls! You like feminine things for women! Like these razors! Which are pink, and are not razors for men! Let’s see what these women have to say:

‘It’s great! It’s a razor for women! And I am a woman! Awesome!’

Yep, these are women’s razors, ladies. And you, as women, deserve them. Don’t let your boyfriend steal your pink razor, because this razor is for you! And will give you smooth legs. For him.”

One ad in this category is the Yoplait ad in which two young women at a wedding discuss how good the yogurt is. I have a theory about how this ad was written. Here’s the ad in its original form:

“This yogurt is like cute best man good.”

“No, it’s like pretty dress good.”

“No, it’s like spike heels good.”

“No, it’s like catching the bouquet good.”

Then, someone at the meeting said, “oh, but we’re trying to cater to today’s young independent women. You know, they’re not really into getting married, and would probably discuss something other than that.”

And so they rewrote the ad as follows:

“This yogurt is like cute best man good.”

“No, it’s like burning this dress good.”

“No, it’s like getting these shoes off good.”

“No, it’s like not catching the bouquet good.”

Done!

There is one ad out there right now that goes in entirely the opposite direction. It’s a brief ad for a pregnancy test, and the focus is entirely on the pregnancy test wand looming out of a chrome-background, with slanted lighting and a symphonic build-up in the score, and a (male!) voiceover says something like, “Introducing…the most effective pregnancy yadda-yah in blah.” The pregnancy test could just as easily be a screwdriver or a Mach-III razor, or a cell phone. The ad is really jarring when you realize that it is, in fact, a pregnancy test, because everything about it is so completely unfeminine. And for that, I love it.

[Incidentally, I have so, so many ideas for utterly inappropriate, yet freaking awesome birth control advertisements, and I really wish that someone would hire me to make them, because all current ads for birth control just could not be more terrible (Yaz). Like, the ad would feature women being really disgusted and annoyed by screaming babies on the subway, or having to hold their friend's baby, or whatever, and the birth control box is pictured, and it has a picture of a baby with an X over it, and the tagline could be, "Make sure it never happens to you."]

To be fair, lately there have been more and more ads for men’s products that are chiefly about men being men and not women, but in addition, these ads mostly include the assumption that men would not use women’s products, because women are freaking retarded and no guy in his right mind would touch anything a stupid woman might like. The most obvious example of this is that (admittedly very old) Burger King ad, where a throng of men stride around in the street, doing manly things like throwing a truck off a bridge, ripping their underwear right out of their pants, and singing about how they wouldn’t settle for “chick food.” I was actually unaware that there even was sex-specific “women’s food.” I’ve just been eating non-gender-specific food all this time. I hope I don’t die.

And now, here’s this Centrum vitamin ad, in which a voiceover says something like, “If you’re a man over 50, do you think you should be taking the same multivitamin as a woman takes?”

“I don’t think so!” replies a graying fellow on a golf course, before thwacking a ball in self-satisfaction. I have not heard many 50+ men speak of women in general with such knee-jerk distaste, that reaction being more common in boys of twelve. Presumably, the man is a confirmed bachelor and is golfing at a men’s only club, which features a big sign on the front gate reading, ‘No Girlz Alowed!’

[Since writing this, I've seen the companion ad, in which an older woman is asked if she thinks she should be taking the same multivitamin as a man. "Do I have a choice?" she replies, nervously chewing her lip.]

I don’t understand why advertisements for gender-specific products think the only way to appeal to possible consumers is by denigrating whatever sex the product is not for, but let’s just assume for the sake of argument, that that’s the only way it’s done. Fine. But it’s one thing to appeal to men by running down women if you only want men to buy your product. If I’m alienated by an ad, I just think, ‘well, they’re not advertising to me. They don’t want my money, so I won’t spend it on them.’ I feel this way about Twix, which has just thrown up a ton of ads in which eating Twix saves some cheating guy from being busted by his girlfriend, and other things about how men are scamps and need Twix’s help to hide this from their significant others. “Need a moment (to think up a good lie)? Twix! The adultery-masker!” I assume that Twix has done its market research and has determined that men are their most important consumers, and that they can afford to lose the business of whatever women are buying Twix. Beer companies have always assumed that they could sacrifice any money women might be spending on beer, and their advertisements entirely appeal to men (again, almost exclusively by objectifying and degrading women, because how else could you possibly appeal to a man other than by running down women, right?). Or perhaps they gauged (in my case, correctly) that beer is so important to women that they’ll buy it anyway, no matter how offensive to them the advertising is.

But what really gets me is when a company runs some ads insulting women, and other ads catering to them. Burger King used to run an ad all about their grilled chicken sandwich and so forth, and how some woman wanted to go there on a date for that. I don’t really remember; I just recall the ad was aimed at “chicks.” And now they’ve got this ad where a giant, anthropomorphic chicken sandwich is a sort of Lothario, seducing all the women in an unfortunate anthropomorphic burger’s life, including his preteen daughter. The ad is clearly aimed at men, but it’s about how women like chicken (because one thing that fast food companies all seem to believe wholeheartedly is that chicken is for women and beef is for men, just as pink is for girls and blue is for boys). Does Burger King really think that women are so stupid that they won’t notice that the same company that’s begging for their business in certain spots is insulting them in others (or doing both simultaneously in the same ad)?

Miller Lite might get away with this, but a chicken sandwich doesn’t get you drunk. Screw you, Burger King.

–

More:

I Hate Ads VI

I Hate Ads V

I Hate Ads IV

I Hate Ads II

I Hate Ads

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, Food, Television | 3 Comments »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
September 27, 2007

Kirstie and Valerie’s Diet-Based Relationship Continues to Degenerate

Ad Spot #5:

(Valerie is canoodling with her new boyfriend. The doorbell rings. Valerie answers the door to see Kirstie standing there. Even though they are face-to-face, the ad is still shot in split-screen, because otherwise it is all too obvious that Kirstie weighs far more than Valerie. Hopefully, it looks like some sort of artistic choice.)

Valerie: Uh…hi, Kirstie. I didn’t expect you to drop by.

Kirstie: Hi Valerie! It’s me, Kirstie! I haven’t heard from you for awhile! I wondered how you’re doing, and if you’ve reached your goal weight yet!

Valerie: Oh, sure. Yeah, I lost the weight. Oh…this is Joaquin. Joaquin, Kirstie. Um…we’re just having a quiet night in, Kirstie.

Kirstie: Awesome! I brought Jenny Donut-O’s!

Valerie: To be honest, Kirstie, we weren’t really expecting company tonight. Call first next time.

Kirstie: Oh. I see. Sorry to intrude.

Valerie: No problem. Night-night.

Ad Spot #6:

(Kirstie and Valerie sit at a table. Kirstie eats a sandwich, and Valerie drinks black coffee. Although they are seated across from each other, they are still shot in split-screen. Hopefully, it symbolizes the growing rift between them.)

Kirstie: Hi Valerie! It’s me, Kirstie! I’m so glad you were able to finally meet me for lunch! Glad you could fit me in to your packed schedule!

Valerie: Oh, sure. Me too. What’s new with you these days?

Kirstie: Still losing weight with Jenny! You know, this sandwich is delicious and Jenny-approved! You should try one!

Valerie: Yeah, honestly, Jenny really helped me get the bulk of my weight off, but now that I’m quite thin again, I’m back to good, old-fashioned not eating. It’s cheaper and more effective.

Kirstie: Oh. Yeah. You’re really small.

Valerie: Well, you look great, too. We all have different bodies.

Kirstie: Mmm.

Valerie: Soooo…well, I guess I need to get going. It was good to catch up! Let’s try and keep in touch.

Kirstie: Totally! What are you doing this weekend?

Valerie: Oh, I think I have to go to the East coast. But, um, I’ll call you when I get back.

Ad Spot #7:

(Kirstie, drunk, lies around her apartment in a negligee, eating Edy’s light ice cream out of the tub. Each of her body parts are shot in split-screen. She dials the phone.)

Valerie’s recorded voice: Hi, it’s Valerie, and you’ve reached my voicemail. Please leave a message.

Kirstie: Hi, Valerie. It’s me, Kirstie! Again! Have you called Kirstie yet? No, you haven’t! Because you’re a fucking skinny bitch from hell!

Ad Spot #8:

(Montage of Kirstie, Delta Burke, Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli toilet papering Valerie’s mansion, while Kelis’s Milkshake plays. Laughing hysterically, they pile into a limo and squeal off into the night.)

Posted in Advertising, Food, Humor, People, Television | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , ,
September 9, 2007

I Hate Ads II

Who were the people in the focus groups who told advertisers that they really love the word “snack?” This freaking word is being used and used and used and used, snapped out of the spokespersons’ mouths as precisely and repeatedly as possible. “Snack. Snack snack snack snack snack.” It’s driving me mad, the way Hobbes’s repetition of “smock” did Calvin. “When kids love a ‘snack,’ you know it.” “With ice-cold skim milk, it’s a healthy ‘snack’ that….” “Don’t let your ‘snacks’ define you.” “I just need a ‘snack!’ Just a healthy….” ARGH! STOP SAYING SNACK!

That last quote, incidentally, is from a Soy Joy ad, and Soy Joy is leading a spate of new products, in which health food is marketed to look as unappetizing as possible. Soy Joy ads feature bland women speaking to a webcam about how annoyed they are by tasty, appetizing food, and how they just want something all-natural and boring. And then the Soy Joy bar is pictured, looking like a beige wad of masking tape. I don’t get this new health-food pitch. If you want to market healthy foods, you have to make the health food look really appealing (or at least make the people eating it look glamorous, wealthy and thin), not show it looking utterly boring next to really appealing foods.

There’s some ad – I think it’s for a Special K red vitamin water, but I can’t really remember – where these people at a meeting get a tray of frapuccinos, and this girl declines her frapuccino in favor of a bottle of red water. But they make the frapuccinos look utterly delicious! They’re all perfect and chocolaty, with the whipped cream and sprinkles puffy and attractive, and with perky purple straws. And the vitamin water looks like hell next to them; the ad leaves me very depressed and really craving a frapuccino. If you’re going to do an ad like that, you have to make the frapuccinos look all melted and sticky and syrupy and gross, and have a bunch of fat, ugly, sad office drones sucking them down noisily. And then you make the red water look refreshing and clean, and have some chic girl in a nice dress at a futuristically pristine desk pouring it into a fluted glass, and when she takes a sip, giant animated strawberries in a stream of crystal water splash around her thin, perfect calves. That’s how you make people want to drink your crappy vitamin water. Like that ad for a water I can’t remember, where a bitchy-looking anorexic teenager is utterly nauseated by a nasty old lunch-lady displaying vat after vat of fried, gray food, and so the skinny teenager jumps into a giant bottle of the water and curls into the fetal position (“find your refuge,” says the voiceover). The ad makes you realize that food is a disgusting thing from which you must escape, and only giant pigs would be interested in it. All the desirable, young people just drink water. See? Effective.

Another ad in this category is the A&W root beer float ad, in which a boy drinks a plain-looking root beer float, and says something like, ‘Isn’t this better than a jamocha-chip mint-frizzle frappe-whoo-ha thing?’ where he points at his friend, who is drinking THE COOLEST LOOKING DRINK I’VE EVER SEEN. You’re meant to think the friend’s drink looks absurd and overly perplexing next to the boring old root beer float, but the friend’s drink has whipped cream and sprinkles and a curly straw, and all I can think is, ‘where can I get one of those?!’ The root beer float drinker goes on to talk about how his float is really American (read: dull as nails and utterly unchallenging). Which is funny because, other than that whole let’s-not-buy-anything-French craze back when Chirac didn’t want to support the Iraq invasion, I didn’t realize that even the most apple-pie neocons required all of their foods to somehow be labeled “American.” Cars or T-shirts, maybe…but food? I don’t think anyone really wants to live on hot dogs and processed cheese, but if they do, I guess they can wash them down with root beer.

Incidentally, a lot of food companies apparently really think that viewers will empathize with their utter disdain for the lengthy names of Starbucks milkshakes. That whole ‘jamocha-chip-frizzle’ riff is in a lot of ads now (including one of the Soy Joy ads, in fact). Somebody somewhere decided that this was advertising gold. And granted, the long names are a little silly, but I don’t really think American consumers are losing sleep because of mocha chip frapuccino-generated rage quite at the rate advertisers seem to think they are.

And along with this, who decided that a really great way to tap into American food-based alienation was to repeat variations on ‘if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t eat it’? This sentiment is always put forth as if it were sheer, undeniable common sense: “why on Earth would you be so insane as to eat something if you can’t pronounce all of the ingredients?”

What? Do people really hold up a box of cereal and worry about the fact that they can’t orally recite the ingredient list? And if that is the case, shouldn’t children, who can’t read or pronounce anything at all, be denied all food? Health-food makers are declaring this all over the place lately; from a Soy Joy ad, to the copy on the back of my box of Back to Nature crackers (and now that I think about it, in the same A&W ad just under discussion), I’m told that if I am too stupid to parse out a multi-syllabic word, then I ought to stick to foods that won’t attempt to challenge me in this way. Really, I’d love to see all advertising continue along in this vein: ‘If you can’t pronounce it, why would you upload it to your hard drive?’ ‘If you’ve never tried it before, why would you go near it now?’ ‘If you’ve never been to a country, why would you use any product from there?’ And so forth.

–

More:

I Hate Ads VI

I Hate Ads V

I Hate Ads IV

I Hate Ads III

I Hate Ads

Posted in Advertising, Food, Television | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
August 27, 2007

I Hate Ads

For several years, I did not have a television. I wish I still didn’t, but I live with people, so I have one, and because I have one, I watch it more frequently than I really should. TV shows these days seem to mainly function as short blips to pad out the advertising, and the more ads I watch, the more interested I become in what makes a good, creative ad, and what makes a terrible one. Some ads just bother me. I mean, just annoy the ever living shit out of me, until I start screaming in rage and throwing things at the television set. And wake up in the night, ranting about their horrible writing and inconsistent themes. And finally, blog about them. To wit:

First of all, the sour Skittles ad, where a man is being milked by a milking machine. Now, my objection to this is not, as you might think, that this ad is totally disgusting. Rather, it is because of the imprecise way in which the ad is worded. Next to misogyny, this sort of careless, nonsensical language use is my biggest pet peeve in advertising. It would be bad enough if an advertising agency merely pitched such an ad, but on top of that, when you think of all the work that is done on an ad, all the reviewing and rewriting and shooting and focus group testing, and so forth…when you think that throughout that long, expensive process in which the ad is discussed and worked on by dozens and dozens of people, that not one of those people ever said, ‘you know, this phrasing doesn’t make a damn bit of sense,’ well, that is a very disheartening thought to me, to say the least.

In the sour Skittles ad, the farmer comes in and angrily says to the man being milked, “I’m just saying that maybe if you didn’t eat so many sour Skittles, I wouldn’t have sour milk!”

And the man being milked replies, “Well. That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

What? No risk was introduced! That makes no sense at all! If the farmer had said, “I’m just saying, if you keep on eating those sour Skittles, I’m going to kick your ass,” the man’s response would have made sense. Or, if the farmer’s dialogue was the same, the man could have said, “Well. That’s a theory I’m not prepared to test.” If anything, assuming that the “risk” is producing non-sour milk by curbing the consumption of sour Skittles, the man being milked has agreed to take that risk! Which would mean he won’t be eating sour Skittles anymore, but we are clearly meant to understand that he is disagreeing with the farmer, and will continue to eat the sour Skittles (and in fact, he does so immediately after delivering his ludicrous reply). So, the risk must be an implied, unspoken risk that the farmer might possibly visit some harm upon the man if he does not agree to test the farmer’s theory, and lay off the sour Skittles. The man has replied to something that the farmer has not actually said.

It’s especially disappointing that this clunker comes from Skittles, as they have had some of my favorite ads in the past: the ‘Taste the Rainbow’ ads, with their beautiful, surreal visuals, and that yodeling rabbit ad.

Another ad in this category is the Kia sales event ad, where a man says to a coworker, after the coworker finishes a presentation:

“Man, you were on fire up there! Tell me, did you ever study karate?”

“No,” replies the coworker. “But I did get a kickin’ deal at the Kia sales event!”

What? What does karate have to do with anything? Especially after the guy led into it with all his emphasis on fire. It might have made marginally more sense if he’d said, “Man, you were on fire up there! Tell me, did you ever escape from a burning building?” And then the coworker replies, “No, but I did get a smokin’ deal at the Kia sales event!”

Okay, that still would have made no sense, but at least it would have made consistently no sense all the way through, for the same general reason. Or, the guy could have said, “Man, you were so focused and aggressive up there! Tell me, did you ever study karate?” Or even, “Man, you were throwing some heat up there! Tell me, did you ever study karate?” I could do this all day.

The other problem with Kia’s ad is that the premise of the ad has nothing at all to do with the product, and could just as easily be applied to any good or service. Another perfect example of this type of ad is the Holiday Inn Express ad where some daredevil in the desert decides at the last minute not to ride a motorcycle through a flaming hoop (or something like that). A reporter asks, ‘What happened? Did you suddenly wise up?’ (Or something like that.)

And the man replies, ‘No. But I did stay at the Holiday Inn Express last night.’

He could just as easily say, ‘No. But I did drink a Yoplait Smoothie.’ Or, ‘No. But I did call Ace Car Service.’ Or, ‘No. But I did just switch to Geico.’ Or, ‘No. But I did just eat a Big Mac.’ Or ANYTHING AT ALL.

I imagine that advertising companies must just have a giant drawer full of such fill-in-the-blanks ads for whenever they either can’t think of a custom-made ad from some client, or aren’t being paid enough to bother.

–

More:

I Hate Ads VI

I Hate Ads V

I Hate Ads IV

I Hate Ads III

I Hate Ads II

Posted in Advertising, Food, Television | 2 Comments »

Tags: , , ,
April 5, 2007

I’m Not the Only One Who Hates Green Tea

Slate columnists are on a roll lately (see also related articles at the end). Anytime you think merely ingesting a substance says something about your virtue as a person, you’ve likely fallen victim to a marketing campaign. In fact, I’m suspicious of the whole ‘moral groceries’ movement in general. I don’t doubt there are some benefits; I’m just not sure that spending large amounts on attractively packaged, peer-approved, designer groceries is helping impoverished nations, the environment and our own bodies and souls quite as much as it is helping Whole Foods, Amy, Annie, et al. Avoiding pesticides is all well and good, but it’s not the key to a Utopian society. You can’t save the world just by stuffing your face.

Now, having preached, let me redeem myself slightly by admitting that my own fridge is currently stocked with these products, and that this entire rant was likely triggered by my wandering into the Union Square Whole Foods yesterday and having the most terrifying experience of my life. I’m still recovering. In my opinion, one of the chief advantages to living in this country in this century is that we do not typically have to club each other to death for food. Apparently, fashionable New Yorkers don’t know this. I was buffeted, herded and knocked from one end of the store to the other, up the escalators and down, around the olive bar and into the cheese display. I could sort of glimpse vague food shapes above the massing swell of browsing heads, but every time I got close, I was promptly shoved out again. I can understand having to work so hard to get up to a bar and obtain a martini, but I’ll be damned if scoring soy milk from a dairy case is worth possible death and dismemberment. At one point, my splinted hand (which I’d mostly been clutching guardedly to my chest as if it were an infant) accidentally slipped into a lady’s shopping bag and lodged there. I tried like mad to extract it, but it only became more entangled. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I kept repeating, as she, a real pro, went on with her shopping, dragging me up and down the aisle and glaring at me the while.

When I finally extricated myself from her bag, I was more than ready to flee. Oh, for a $.69 Patio burrito from a corner minimart! Sadly, the exits were through the check-out lines, which were so long, they wound around an entire floor. Again, I’d think a major advantage to living in a thriving capitalist country would be never having to queue all day for rations, but then, I suppose if it’s your choice and you have an ipod to listen to while you wait, it’s not so bad. At any rate, I finally fought my way out through the entrance, which was about as easy as swimming up a waterfall, and emerged, bloody and battered, in Union Square, where I promptly secured a hot dog from a street vendor.

–

On another topic altogether, the Times slams this year’s Humana Festival.I am in favor of new play festivals in general (and the Humana Festival in particular), and not having seen any of the plays reviewed here, I can’t say whether I agree with the review, but I do agree with this:

Marc Masterson, artistic director of the Actors Theater of Louisville, the festival’s host for three decades, favors plays that engage with contemporary culture and politics. That’s admirable, but it can result in work that telegraphs its importance in capital letters (a failing epitomized by Craig Wright’s “Unseen”), prizes preachment over drama (as in that secret history of Barbie) or disguises a hollow core with grabby imagery (as did “Dark Play”).

I’m tired of seeing these badly written issue plays everywhere, and the reason young playwrights keep churning them out is because that’s what the folks with the money and the venues prefer that everyone submit.

Seriously, more links? I do apologize, but it’s just so easy and, as I think I’ve mentioned a couple of hundred times, my hand is hurt. I promise I will post something original before I post any more links.

Posted in Advertising, Food, New York City, Rants, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
April 3, 2007

Sometimes the World Seems a Lot More Fixable…

…like when you discover all of the ads you hate are actually created by the same company.

Posted in Advertising, Television | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , ,
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