"Sit Right Back and Grab Some Tails..."
Another seminar rough draft due this week, so my heart's not really in this blog. If it sucks--oh well, sue me. Well, we've been talking about advertising and PR and all that in class recently. While admittedly that stuff is important in terms of companies getting the word out about their products, when did the defining chacteristic of America become consumption?
A friend of mine was in Mexico years ago when AlkaSeltzer had their "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" ad campaign. When they found out he was an American, they didn't ask him what it was like in America, or how to best sneak across the border. In bad English they exclaimed, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!"(insert funny Mexican accent). America has come to be equted with our advertisements--with our conspicuous consumption.
TV is more ads than it is shows. And the worst part is, they show the same ad over and over and over and over. I was watching the NCAA tournament a few weeks ago, and Applebee's had an ad for their new shrimp dinners that uses the tune from the theme song to Gilligan's Island. "Sit right back and grab some tails, tails of some tasty shrimp..." Brutal. It ran every commercial break, and sometimes more than once. It's like, thanks yeah, I know you have shrimp you've already told me 50 FUCKING TIMES! And by the way, inby far the fattest country in the world, do people really need to be going to Applebee's to eat shrimp anyway? How about a salad you fat bastards.
OK, I'm tired of ranting, basically my point is, while advertising is a necessary evil, I hate it. Stop showing me all the things I can buy that I don't need and can't afford but will put on my credit card anyway and go deep in debt. But it's ok, cuz I just saw an ad for credit counseling.
posted by harrington at 11:16 AM
1 Comments:
One of my biggest pet peeves right now is completely unoriginal commercials. It seems like the “big thing” is take an older song and put new words to it. Wow. Really breaking some new ground there, eh? Fortunately, I haven’t had to endure the Applebee’s commercial, but I’ve definitely seen other ones like it. Perhaps you’ve seen them, too—such as that horrible pizza commercial: “One of these days those bites are gonna pop right into you.” (To the song “One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”) Supposedly, the commercial has something to do with Jessica Simpson and the Dukes of Hazzard, but the only thing I take away from the commercial is being annoying at seeing it on EVERY commercial break...in addition to the fact that I will never want to try those pizza bites, or whatever it is they’re trying to advertise. In other words, I don’t really care about Jessica Simpson singing some cheesy song—if you have to cover up your product by doing something like that, it seems to me like there might not be much of a product there.
This kind of reminds me of a show we had on earlier today. This guy was reviewing DVDs and giving his opinion on if they were worth buying, not worth buying, or just worth renting. It seems his main deciding factor pertained to the amount of special features the DVD contained. For example, he loved the movie King Kong, but he thought the special features were horrible and unentertaining, so he said to pass on it. So, what’s my point? Well, it just seems to me like everyone is getting away from the product itself. We have to find something to make the product sell-able…but shouldn’t it just speak for itself? I mean, when did we start buying movies based on their special features? It seems to me that if we want to own a movie, we buy the DVD for just that—the movie. But, this is just another way for them to market things to us and make more money, I guess.
Anyway, all of the said, I am with you on this one—I’m tired of seeing the same things advertised over and over again. I also liked how you refer to advertisements as a “necessary evil.” In a sense, it’s important for us to know what’s available to us. However, I don’t need a cheesy rendition of a song informing me of those things.
~P-B:)
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3:07 PM
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