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Rob Potter
The people who make television commercials have never been known to have great respect for the intelligence of the average adult human being, but I seem to be noticing a dumbing-down of an industry that had already perfected the art of dumbing-down.
I realize that advertisers are really just trying to get our attention and have to go to greater and greater lengths to achieve that end. Sometimes they actually do achieve a certain level of creativity. There's one ad running, now, that features people in skin-tight suits who meld their bodies together to create the shape of an automobile. Frankly, I don't recall what make and model of automobile, so the ad isn't really all that effective, but I give them points for creativity.
And there's an ad for one of those little pills that helps men get their groove on, if you know what I mean, in which the couple are seen scampering about the house turning off the stove, shutting down the garden house, letting the poor dog outside, etc. All this is necessary because, of course, they've been too busy being otherwise engaged. It's wildly exaggerated but you gotta like the humour. Better than their past commercial with the couple who arrive late at concert-- so late that no sooner do they sit down than the concert ends. So why didn't they just stay home? Okay, okay, it's just a commercial.
Which is better than a lot of the ads I see lately.
There's the brand of cell phone whose ads feature the 'loser' whose cell phone is always cutting out on him at crucial moments. These are always followed, immediately, by a chance meeting with the guy whose phone never cuts out on him. This is kind of like one of those before-and-after ads for diets and cosmetics. The guy with the bad phone service is always unkempt-looking, harried, red-eyed, etc. The other guy is always clean-shaven, hair and clothing neat and tidy. He always has that look of confidence about him.
I would buy into this but I've never met a cell phone that doesn't cut out somewhere or lose battery at a crucial time.
Speaking of cell phones, there's the ad for a model called Razr. Leaving out the 'o' is supposed to give it an edge, I guess, although given that these are produced by marketing people I'm never sure whether the misspelling really is deliberate. Anyway, this is the one where a handsome urban guy and a pretty urban girl get into a sort of knife fight, using their cell phones as weapons. This ad is supposed to drill into my head that their phones are very thin. Okay. I realize there are people on the planet who have accumulated enough money to buy a cell phone even though they haven't the brains to figure out that being thin has nothing to do with how well it functions. These would be the same people who buy a car because it's the right colour without worrying about any of the important details.
There are commercials for a certain brand of men's after shave that suggest that using this product will force men to have to fight off aggressive advances by any woman who happens to get a whiff. It's a blatant rip-off of the old Hai Karate ads from the 1960s. Hai Karate, for those of you too young to remember, even came with instructions for basic karate moves to help us poor males fend off women driven mad by our after shave. (I never needed the karate. Hmmmm.) Anyway, if there are guys out there who believe this stuff, come see me and for the same money I'll sell you something that will really cause many women to come running -- it's called chocolate.
The one I really hate is another car ad which shows a family supposedly enjoying spending time together -- in the car, each involved in their own little world. One kid watching a movie, another watching a sports event, another with the earphones on. They may be together in body but they're miles apart otherwise.
There's no point complaining, of course, because advertisers will go on trying to persuade us we need their products by appealing to our stupidity.
I like to think humankind is smart enough to know better, but the commercials keep getting dumber and we keep on buying. The proof of that is the amount of spam that comes into our computers nowadays. Who buy's that stuff? I don't know the answer, but I assume that if people are using those gimmicks enough people must be falling for it to make it worthwhile.
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