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garranHave you noticed the tendency of advertising campaigns to go senile? I'm speaking particularly of static ads like on billboards and buses. It seems to happen a lot that the first couple of ads in a certain theme will be clever and elegantly conceived, and then as the theme continues they'll get less and less clever, and make less and less sense. Lotto 649 does this a lot; see their present 'always be nice to people who play' campaign (which went from things like "Of course I'll help you move your piano" to "It's not you, it's me") and also their previous 'I am not rich' series.
My other prime example for this right now is the 'Natural Attraction' campaign, which is for butter or possibly some sort of butter substitute. The basic format is a blob of butter with some food that you might put butter on arranged so that it looks like some animal predator hunting the butter. Early examples included a shark made of french bread and an octopus or something made I think of long green vegetables. Recently, though, they have clearly forgotten that there was anything to the concept aside from making animals out of food, and have trended increasingly toward animals that are not at all menacing; the most recent one is a carrot that looks like a peacock.
Then, of course, there are advertisements that never made any sense to begin with. Here is a reproduction of an amazing ad which TransLink has put on its buses to emphasize the benevolence of the transit police:
I find amazing both the very existence of the clarification and the fact that they apparently thought it deserved to be treated like a punchline. Whenever I see it I just want to gape and stare in a sort of horrified trance, which I guess possibly makes the ad some sort of success. Andrew's theory is that the second comma actually isn't supposed to exist.
<cola> No, I'm pretty sure the comma is just the visible sign of someone's brain melting.
<cola> "My God, it's 110 degrees in this office. I'm leaving bloody fingerprints on everything I touch. What? Yeah, I think there should be a comma there."
I think it says a lot about the ad in question that this is the sanest explanation any of us have thought of.
(Andrew, while I'm on the subject of his theories, also has a theory that some advertisers come up with things that are stupid and inexplicable on purpose, so that people will complain about them to their friends and it will be a kind of viral marketing. This made me feel paranoid for a little while whenever I felt like pointing out some ludicrous advertising that I was playing right into the hands of the Man -- it's actually possible that he just came up with the theory in order to shut me up -- but in the end I have to believe that there really is such a thing as bad publicity.)
I saw a wonderful graffito the other day. There is another one of those TransLink ads, this one promoting not the police attached to the transit system but the bus drivers themselves. It goes,
Underneath one particular instance of this, somebody had scrawled: "I don't get it."
My other prime example for this right now is the 'Natural Attraction' campaign, which is for butter or possibly some sort of butter substitute. The basic format is a blob of butter with some food that you might put butter on arranged so that it looks like some animal predator hunting the butter. Early examples included a shark made of french bread and an octopus or something made I think of long green vegetables. Recently, though, they have clearly forgotten that there was anything to the concept aside from making animals out of food, and have trended increasingly toward animals that are not at all menacing; the most recent one is a carrot that looks like a peacock.
Then, of course, there are advertisements that never made any sense to begin with. Here is a reproduction of an amazing ad which TransLink has put on its buses to emphasize the benevolence of the transit police:
TELL US ABOUT ANYTHING
UNUSUAL. YOU KNOW, DIFFERENT FROM
THE USUAL, UNUSUAL.
UNUSUAL. YOU KNOW, DIFFERENT FROM
THE USUAL, UNUSUAL.
I find amazing both the very existence of the clarification and the fact that they apparently thought it deserved to be treated like a punchline. Whenever I see it I just want to gape and stare in a sort of horrified trance, which I guess possibly makes the ad some sort of success. Andrew's theory is that the second comma actually isn't supposed to exist.
<cola> No, I'm pretty sure the comma is just the visible sign of someone's brain melting.
<cola> "My God, it's 110 degrees in this office. I'm leaving bloody fingerprints on everything I touch. What? Yeah, I think there should be a comma there."
I think it says a lot about the ad in question that this is the sanest explanation any of us have thought of.
(Andrew, while I'm on the subject of his theories, also has a theory that some advertisers come up with things that are stupid and inexplicable on purpose, so that people will complain about them to their friends and it will be a kind of viral marketing. This made me feel paranoid for a little while whenever I felt like pointing out some ludicrous advertising that I was playing right into the hands of the Man -- it's actually possible that he just came up with the theory in order to shut me up -- but in the end I have to believe that there really is such a thing as bad publicity.)
I saw a wonderful graffito the other day. There is another one of those TransLink ads, this one promoting not the police attached to the transit system but the bus drivers themselves. It goes,
ON MY STREET, WE ALWAYS
LOOK OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER.
IT JUST SO HAPPENS MY STREET
IS THE BUS ROUTE.
LOOK OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER.
IT JUST SO HAPPENS MY STREET
IS THE BUS ROUTE.
Underneath one particular instance of this, somebody had scrawled: "I don't get it."
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 09:21 pm (UTC)TELL US ABOUT ANYTHING
UNUSUAL. YOU KNOW, DIFFERENT FROM
THE USUAL, UNUSUAL.
[/quote]
I'd like to note that, if you slur "usual" down to two syllables, but leave both the "unusual"s at a stately four each, this is actually 7-9-7
no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 02:10 am (UTC)TELL US ABOUT ANYTHING UNUSUAL.
YOU KNOW, ANYTHING OTHER
THAN THE USUAL, UNUSUAL.
-Garran
no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 01:13 am (UTC)I did see an ad I liked this afternoon - Coast Mountain Sports showed a hiker near a sunny cliffside with the caption "Be your own search engine".
no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 02:32 am (UTC)-Andy H.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 05:28 am (UTC)Also, it seems so redundant for translink to be putting out even stupider ads. We got it already, guys. You're really, really dumb. (/remembers the "don't forget your holiday packages" ads)