Advertisers are People Too

Open for business.

Well, everyone, the school year is wrapping up. And this will be the last required post I make for my new media writing class, but I do plan to continue updating this as a form of anti-retail therapy. Hopefully, some of you will continue to read.

This blog has been a study in why I can't watch TV anymore, why I can't listen to the radio anymore, why I sometimes buy the crappy off-brand version of a product simply because I remember the mainstream version's unbearable ad, why I boycott many news websites because of their drop-down, beat-you-in-the-face ads. Thank God for Netflix, Sirius, Equate, and NPR.

I'm not sure why I've taken this angry-old-man approach to advertising. Maybe it's a mechanism my mind has invented to keep me from breaking the bank on a stone cold wall of other people's capitalist pursuits. Maybe I'm just a jackass. But, whatever the reason, I know it hasn't helped me that much.

I try to put up this facade of someone who is legitimately not affected by the underhanded meddling of advertisers. I'm not. I can admit this now. Having put my annoyances into words this semester has helped me to see that simply noticing these things doesn't mean I'm immune to them.

Jingles get stuck in my head. I can't look away from the bizarre Starburst and Skittles commercials. I do wonder sometimes if I really was the one-millionth visitor and if I really won that all-inclusive cruise.

What if you really are THE one-millionth visitor and you pass up a Caribbean cruise? I should click it just to be sure.

That's the problem: If I'm not thinking about it, these ads play me exactly as they were intended to. And there are plenty of times when I'm not thinking.

So, what I'm wondering is, has this blog simply articulated things everyone notices about advertising and just chooses to ignore or forget about, or have I pointed out something new?

I'm thinking it's the former.

Why? Because--as much as I hate to admit it--advertisers are people too.

Any one of us could go get a degree in advertising or marketing and start manipulating the masses in four years or less. We'd still be us, right?

The conclusion I've come to is that these annoying ads aren't evil--they're just annoying. Can't say they won't still make my blood boil sometimes, but I'm going to try to accept them for what they are.

Annoying. Loud. Invasive. And, sometimes, effective.

Thanks for a good semester, fellow classmates.

I dare you to watch all of these consecutively.

I won't torture you anymore. But, wow. These things seem almost like they're MEANT to bug you. I'm having trouble picturing the sad, sad person who finds these pleasant and inviting. The only thing these commercials make seem pleasant and inviting is some good, ol' fashioned, commercial-free Netflix.

Where do they even find the actors in these commercials? I feel like the sets must be in the basement of the psych ward for the criminally insane. They just put a bunch of schizophrenic murderers in an Olive Garden-looking room and film what happens. Then they just narrate over it and edit out the part where the child in the third one eats both uncles' throats and when the son in the first one beats the woman to death with a fake plastic breadstick.

Speaking of the one with the mom and her son, watch the son's face when he says 'maybe.' Tell me that's not pure evil.

And, of course, there's always the second commercial, with the witty fellow doing the alfredo. Baha. Ha. Haha. Heh. Hum. Haw.

OK, Olive Garden, what's the deal? Everyone hates your commercials. And--maybe I'm alone here, but I don't think I am--your food kind of sucks. In this economy, don't freakin' push it.

Anyway, sorry to make you watch these atrocities. Until next time.

Got Milk?

Don't worry, it's a German thing.

Hola, bonjour, hello.

Today, I want to bring my dialogue on advertising and marketing overseas. What I want to address is bad translations. As it turns out, some of the most successful ad campaigns in history have had terrible repercussions in other countries because of bad translations.

Perhaps advertisers shouldn't have spent so much money inserting subliminal messages into commercials and paid decent, honest translators enough to care about the work they're given.

Regardless, the results of advertisers' slipshod translations have created a lot of good laughs.

Here are three of my favorites:

1) Got Milk?

We all remember this from the '90s and '00s. It was a wildly successful ad campaign in the states, so the Dairy Association thought: "Why not bring this slogan down to Ol' Mexico?"

The ad landed, and it wasn't received as well in Latin America as it was in the U.S. After some time, a bilingual citizen informed the Dairy Association that the translation they had come up with was "Are you lactating?"

Really changes the meaning here.

2) Frank Perdue's Chicken

The slogan in English is "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken."

The slogan in Spanish is "It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."

Does it, Frank? Does it?

There he is.

3) Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation

For those who don't know, ancestors are a big deal in a lot of Asian cultures. Many people believe they can pray to their ancestors, ask for their guidance, and even see them after they've passed on. 

If you didn't know that before, don't feel bad. Pepsi didn't know that either. The Chinese translation of this slogan is "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave."

What more can I say?

See you all next week. And thanks to http://www.funtasticus.com for the slogan translations.

A whole galaxy of steamers, poppers, dippers...

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers..." -- Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

OK, I don't love Fear and Loathing, and I definitely don't condone illegal drug use, but it provides the correct way to name a product with a verb. Here, the product is, for example, "uppers." Uppers bring you, well, up. That's what the product does. That makes sense, right? The same goes for downers, and screamers and laughers make you scream and laugh, supposedly.

Another correct way to name something is by assigning it a noun. If I'm boring you with this, I'm sorry, but advertisers don't seem to get it. So, you name something a tree because it's a tree. From then on out, it's a tree.

Now that that's out of the way, I'll move on to what's been really bugging me lately. Food companies have begun naming foods after the verb used to prepare or eat them. A few examples: steamers, dippers, roasters, poppers.

On the surface, whatever. But when I really think about it, this bothers me more and more. Healthy Choice Steamers can be anything. Pictured above is one of Healthy Choice's finer selections: chicken margherita. Essentially, the food is in the package more or less precooked, and you steam it in the microwave. I'm missing where it became a good idea to call it a steamer.

Isn't the gourmet microwave chef using the product the actual steamer here? You steamed something, so you're a steamer. But no, the food being steamed is the steamer. Same thing with dippers. You dip them in a sauce. You're the dipper--not the food.

On a very basic level, this drives me crazy. But that's me. What should drive everyone crazy is that we can only assume the companies with these poorly named products are messing with us. They want us to  picture ourselves using the product. The steamers commercials always seem to show a woman gingerly sliding the package into the microwave and smiling her freakin' head off.

It's like they're trying to imply some outrageously fun and exciting process that goes into making a microwave dinner.

Here's a good example for reference: Ramen comes in a variety of flavors, but it's all called Ramen, and the flavor is indicated on the package. I'm fine with that. What if it was called Boiler? Because you boil it. You see what I'm getting at.

On a side note, I'm starting to think I'm alone in my dislike of marketing manipulations like these. No one seems to get what I'm saying when I ask them in person if something about Steamers irks their souls. They only want to offer me the counter argument of "fries." Because you fry them. To that, I say: shut yo' mouth. Firstly, they're really called French fries. Secondly, they would be called "fryers" if they were a part of this horrendous marketing ploy.

See you all next week.

Pimpin' is Easy (for Advertisers)

Jim Nelson selling out.

Jim Nelson--a bright-eyed, Nirvana-loving, safety pin pants-wearing, 22-year-old fella--walked into CI Host, a web hosting company, one crisp morning in 2003 knowing he was about to make $7,000. What he didn't know was he was about to open terrifying new doors for the advertising industry.

He was going to sell the back of his head as ad space for the company. He was going to have a logo permanently tattooed on his body.

Business-wise, he was a great success. He brought in 500 new customers within the first six months of his permanent rebranding. Integrity-wise, not so much.

CEO of CI Host, Christopher Faulkner, originally wanted to have the tattoo placed on some desperate soul's forehead, but, at the time, Nelson was the only willing participant, and he would only agree to have it on the back of his head.

There's that integrity again. At least he was a little selective.

And, to be fair, the arrangement wasn't permanent (though the tattoo was). CI Host indicated in Nelson's contract that he had to travel around the U.S. promoting the company and keeping the five square inch tattoo visible at all times for five years.

OK, so let's do the math here. Five goes into 7,000 how many times? 1,400. Congrats, Jim. You signed on for a $1,400 annual salary on a five-year contract. Guess you'll have to get creative selling other body parts to the ad industry to compete with that astronomical minimum wage paycheck everyone else seems to be getting.

Nelson was the first of his kind, but many more have followed in his footsteps. To me, this indicates just how badly the ad industry by the throat. Now we know, if we're ever hard-up for cash, we can essentially prostitute ourselves to advertisers for our meals. What a great last resort. I can't, however, say I wouldn't stoop to this level if I needed the money badly enough. And that's just the problem. They get away with way too much.

Until next time.

Hot dogs cause butt cancer

The ads of the world didn't manage to sufficiently annoy me this week, so I'm writing in favor of a particular ad campaign: the "hot dogs cause butt cancer" ads in various cities across the U.S. sponsored by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

PCRM, with an admittedly pro-PETA stance, claims to have conducted studies that prove hot dogs are the leading cause of colon and rectal cancers. But instead of releasing a high-falutin medical essay that only doctors will read, they took to the streets with billboard ads like this one: 

I approve. It's simple, to the point, and is advocating a cause rather than a product. Advertisers take note. PCRM isn't asking or manipulating us to buy anything. Phenomenal. 

Here are some more of their ads:

I've never eaten hot dogs like this.

And you've gotta love the response of the hot dog industry (Yeah, there's a hot dog industry). According to MSNBC.com, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (Now I've seen everything) called the ads:

"outrageous" and "inflammatory," the trade group dismissed the PCRM as a "pseudo-medical animal rights group" bent on turning all Americans into vegans.

Interesting. I can only imagine that the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council is a group of people with high blood pressure and butt cancer who really love hot dogs.

See you all next week.

Advertising ... IN SPACE!

We all know about Christopher Columbus' romantic trip to the Americas. We learned about how bad-ass he was every year in elementary school. And, even though a lot of people say the story isn't exactly true, we all seem to be realtively proud of him making contact with the Native Americans and "discovering" the new world.

Great. But how different would the story be if, instead of arriving to a bunch of curious Indians interested in his beads and trinkets, he had arrived to this?

Pretty different, right?

I swear I have a point to make here. The point is, space (as cliche as it is to say this) is the modern unexplored frontier. Granted, we've looked around up there a little bit. But, by and large, we don't know nothin' 'bout no space.

But that doesn't matter to capitalism. Capitalism (I believe capitalism was an old, wooden ship) likes to get its greasy paws on anything and everything it can--especially when it comes to advertising.

OK, to the point. Advertisers have actually tried to put billboards in space.Yep, they suck that much.

Come on. Space is freakin' beautiful. And, in 1993, an evil company tried to put billboards in low space orbit that were one square kilometer wide and would be roughly the same size and have roughly the same brightness as the full moon.

Let's all take a moment to add this to our lists of things that make us lose faith in humanity.

...

OK, enter your new hero. U.S. congressman Ed Markey. He introduced a bill in 1993 that banned all obtrusive space advertising. The bill is still in effect today. Now let's take another moment to honor this guy.

Done.

Can you imagine if the advertisers had won that one? There would be no more peaceful night sky. There would, however, be giant McDonald's billboards making everyone hungry during meteor showers.

One small setback for advertisers, one giant leap for the rest of us.