Business: Advertising: Ad Campaign
Product advertisements   (+2)  [vote for, against]
Ranty.

Yes, this is a bit of a rant. If you don't want to read a rant, this is a good idea not to read.

I am arguing for there to be TV adverts about products. I have been brought to this point by the umpteenth advert in which everything but the product in question is being advertised.

I have just, for example, watched a 30-second melodrama about how important fathers are, and how diverse the paternal relationship can be, and how the love between parent and child can be expressed in many different ways, all of them equally valid. This, it turns out at the very end, is an advert for oven chips.

Or I can watch another one which follows the traumas, triumphs and failures of a young woman growing up, from early childhood into old age. Along the way, the course of her life takes many turns and twists, and is met with many a challenge and reverse, yet she reaches a serenity in old age that lets her look back with contentment and satisfaction at a life well lived. In the closing moments of this tear-jerker, it transpires that her success in life is attributable to her choice of current account - thereby explaining why there's been a bloody black horse dogging (or horsing) her all the time.

Now, I'm pretty sure there's a law preventing Coke from saying lots of stuff about Pepsi in their ads, or McDonald's overly encroaching onto Pizza Hut's territory. So, I would like similar protection for Real Life. I don't want to be sold a microwave oven on the insinuation that it will make me a better husband, or a box of cereal on the implication that I will be more successful at work and earn the greater respect of my colleagues.

So, I would like the oven chip advert to be about oven chips and how great they are; and the bank account advert to be about the convenience and/or financial rewards of said bank account.

That is all.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 18 2017

Short and to the point. https://digitalsyno...dvertising-slogans/
[FlyingToaster, Sep 19 2017]

Not the muppets - Dudley Moore https://en.wikipedi...g/wiki/Crazy_People
[calum, Sep 19 2017]

// I don't want to be sold a microwave oven on the insinuation that it will make me a better husband, //

Well, it's not as if it could make you any worse.

// or a box of cereal on the implication that I will be more successful at work //

That's going to take quite a lot more than a box of cereal.

// and earn the greater respect of my colleagues.//

"Honour amongst thieves " ?

// So, I would like the oven chip advert to be about oven chips and how great they are; and the bank account advert to be about the convenience and/or financial rewards of said bank account. //

Advertising long since moved from the naturalistic to the representational, toyed with minimalism, then passed through surrealism into the abstract and the absurd. The Next Big Thing will probably be crude images of aurochs scratched on a cave wall with a charred stick.

What goes around, comes around.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 18 2017


You are not helping my ranty mood one iota, [8th].
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 18 2017


You have missed the real problem here.

You are watching television.

What we really need is a fundraiser to pay for a television commercial recruiting new halfbakers. This is the fourth in a series of efforts to repurpose existing ideas and use them for recruiting efforts.
-- normzone, Sep 18 2017


This kind of advertising only makes commercial sense in markets where a majority of buyers are expected to be somewhat rational.

It works quite well for my current employer, for instance, but for a product which is advertised on TV, this is probably a losing strategy.

"No-one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the general public."
-- Wrongfellow, Sep 18 2017


Sp. "No-one ever lost a Presidential election by underestimating the intelligence of the general public."
-- 8th of 7, Sep 18 2017


May I suggest flipping channels to whatever it is that Steve Bannon is selling lately? His audience isn't capable of abstract thinking quite yet, and so are still roughly at the genre of 'Buy club. Good hunting weapon. Meat source stops run.'
-- RayfordSteele, Sep 18 2017


I'm pretty sure the Muppets once baked this, e.g., "Ocean Soap: it gets you clean" and "Volvos: they're boxy, but good!"
-- pertinax, Sep 19 2017


// those non-BBC channels //

BBC = "Blatantly Backing Corbyn".
-- 8th of 7, Sep 19 2017


//BBC = "Blatantly Backing Corbyn".//

Yeah, 8th. Because it's not like research consistently finds that the media is widely biased against Corbyn or anything, is it?

Oh, wait. It is.
Sample quote from an article in the Independent : "The BBC was especially criticised in the report, which found reporters in its main evening broadcasts used more “pejorative language” to describe Mr Corbyn and his supporters."
-- Loris, Sep 19 2017


//BBC = "Blatantly Backing Corbyn"//
The BBC operates on the British people as a political Pavlovian stimulus, with effects most pronounced in the ultra-paradoxical stage.
-- calum, Sep 19 2017


I've always wondered about that. If "so-called" Islamic State isn't actually called Islamic State, why don't they just call it by whatever name it is actually called?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 19 2017


Because it's probably something weird that they jabber in their funny foreign lingo. It's probably unpronounceable to native English speakers.

// the media is widely biased against Corbyn //

Precisely. It should be "totally".

// "The BBC was especially criticised ... broadcasts used more “pejorative language” to describe Mr Corbyn //

More, but not enough.

// and his supporters." //

Sp. "supporter"
-- 8th of 7, Sep 19 2017


// it's probably something weird that they jabber in their funny foreign lingo// Yes, but the BBC doesn't say "so-called Wales", does it, despite the fact that Wales is called something silly like Cwmmgyr in Welsh.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 19 2017


// Beeb making it possibly seem as though they think brexit was somehow a bad thing //

Heresy ! Blasphemy !! Burn the unbelievers ! Slay them with fire and the sword ! Kill even the children, lest the evil persist !

// Yes, but the BBC doesn't say "so-called Wales", does it, despite the fact that Wales is called something silly like Cwmmgyr in Welsh //

That is due to the effect which C. Northcote Parkinson defined as "The point of Vanishing Interest" i.e. something that no-one cares about.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 19 2017



random, halfbakery