[Tfug] Way OT: Advertising

[Joe Roberts]

I have always considered advertising - for the most part - a type of
pollution.  But my annoyance with it has had an interesting effect.
There is or seems to be this idea that people are suggestible.  Hence
with product placement, you see a bucket of KFC in a television show,
you want to go out and get yourself some KFC.

I don't miss product placement.  I am sensitized to it.  But I
actively recoil from products used in product placement (I find this
insidious and I hate it), and annoying commercials (90% of them).
Between having cancelled cable television, and not having any of those
converter boxes to receive digital signals, adblock in my browser, no
subscriptions to ad-heavy magazines, and no radio, I probably
encounter less advertising than average.

This has only made me more sensitive to it on the occasions where I am
in a doctor's office and am flipping through an ad-heavy magazine or
sitting in Jiffy Lube watching whatever they have on the TV there.

When I encounter those ads in ridiculous places you mention (one
particularly ridiculous place is on benches - the kind you find at bus
stops), I definitely notice, and get annoyed and walk away with a sour
taste in my mouth over whatever product they're advertising.  There
are brands/stores/products I will never buy because the advertising
pisses me off - one example of this is Jared jewelers.  I despise the
concept of jewelry anyway, but if I didn't, after the ads where the
spoiled golddigger bitch wives whine "He went to Jared" in jealousy
over someone else's husband blowing months of salary on a blood
diamond, there is no way in hell I would ever shop there.  That's just
one example - maybe the most egregious.

Some time ago, probably like many people, I changed the whole way I
shop.  When I was a kid, growing up in a place without a lot to do,
going to the mall on Saturdays was a kind of family outing.  It was
normal in my family go shopping when bored.  Now, I only go to a
retail establishment when I need something specific, or am actively
comparison shopping for something I know I need.  As for expensive
items, I research those to death on the Internet through product
reviews and so on (I know I'm not the only one).

I am not against businesses making their products known.  I don't
really have a problem with an ad that says, "This is our product, and
this is what it does and why we think you should buy it" in a
straight-ahead way.  What I hate is lifestyle advertising: "You need
this product or you will be uncool/seen as unhip," and I almost always
hate humor in advertising because it tends to be lowbrow and insults
my intelligence.  I hate ads which want me to, "Picture myself <with
this product> and what a glorious life with <product> it will be."

All this said, I thought of going into advertising because I cannot
help but analyze the entire logic/strategy of a commercial or ad
whenever it appears. When I had TV, I would sit there with my niece
and do color commentary on every advertisement that came on.

You might enjoy a movie called Putney Swope.  I just figured I'd recommend it.

 -Quag7