Eight signs of a culture that has lost its way
“The thing to do is to invent something which people will have to have, which they will use once and then throw away.”
- K.C. Gillette
Ready-Egg
This product is a small flesh-coloured plastic container shaped like an egg. The contents of this plastic egg are six real eggs, pre-beaten, for people who lead busy and demanding lives.
Fruit Snacks
These can be bought at many motorway service stations. A Fruit Snack is a single piece of fruit packaged in plastic with the words”Fruit Snack” printed on it. An “Apple Fruit Snack” contains an apple. An “Orange Fruit Snack” contains an orange, and so on.
Fruit Slices
Fruit Slices are similar to Fruit Snacks, but the fruit is pre-sliced into convenient bite-sized pieces. This eliminates the risk of using one’s own knife.
Health and Safety Signs
Around the shallow duck pond in the park near my house have appeared numerous yellow and black plastic signs. Their purpose is to warn people of the dangers the pond might pose to their well-being. They read: “Caution: Water Hazard!”
Anthropomorphised Meat Industry Animal Friends
Adorable, frolicking chickens advertising fried chicken takeaways. Happy butcher-shop pigs in aprons waving strings of their own sausages. The cute animal mascots of the meat industry want you to eat them, and bear a delightful resemblance to human children.
The Naming of Rocks on Mars
When the 1997 Sojourner mission landed on the planet of Mars, rocks in the vicinity of the landing site were named after popular cartoon characters. One rock was christened Yogi Bear. Others were named Boo Boo and Goofy. Mars is 35 million miles away.
Horse Chestnut Trees in Norwich
Norwich City Council recently decided to cut down a row of 20 full-grown horse chestnut trees because of the risk they posed to pedestrians. This pre-emptive action was taken to prevent possible head injuries caused by falling conkers, and to stop passers-by slipping on the dangerous underfoot “mulch.”
The Stars and the Moon
Since 1979, star naming companies have been offering customers the chance to name their very own star. For just £25.95, loved ones can receive a personalised certificate, and a sky chart with their name printed next to the star of their choice. Since the early eighties, over 500,000 stars have been named in this way.
Alternatively, for a fee of only £19.95, consumers can purchase a 1 acre plot of land on the moon. The purchase comes with a certificate of proof, and co-ordinates to show exactly where the property is situated.
I’d like to ad (pardon the reversed imminent pun) the price of advertising slots…
Does it bother anyone else that the people on Friends were making a million bucks an episode… because Fox were making shitloads from selling advertising around the show… because the advertising slots were so expensive… because the products that were being sold in said advertising slots were benefitting so greatly from the Friends’ vibe… and that all this occured simply because consumers were being fed images and sounds of things that they were told they wanted!?
And people believe it. It’s creepy. And it works. The advertising industry is worth billions and it is nothing more than manipulation of our minds. And we lap it up. That, along with the disturbing evidence already put forth by Scrutes, is enough to send this culture away for a very long time. I rest my case.
And you pay for Friends by watching adverts. Or not, by looking away/making tea/reading a book/changing a channel/muting the TV.
You’ve been stealing art, boyo.
The One About Stealing Art
… Friends was a reworking slash steal of Seinfeld for the buy-because-our-lives-are-meaningless generation … funny show that it was. I watched a few episodes and laughed… god only knows what it has done to my bonds, loans, interests and investments, though!
My point wasn’t exactly about Friends and art but more about advertising. I’m sure Packer, Murdoch and Co are still making millions out of Big Brother, Flog It and anything else that you may or may not consider “art” or less than “art” … that still disturbs me. Every second of advertising is a quick and violent mind fuck.
Perhaps I have derailed this crumbling society discussion with a mere personal aggravation. Perhaps others can (as I hoped to do) provide other ideas about why this society is crumbling… another potential suggestion is critiscism of others at the expense of new suggestions.
It seems all the rage. To be honest… I don’t dig it.
Companies advertise, because they would like you to buy their products/services.
They would be very happy, if only you bought their products/services.
You wrote your comments, because you would like us to think like you.
You would be very happy, if only we thought like you.
Please, do not take this as a personal attack (it is not meant as such).
It obviously goes without saying that, by including my comment here, I would like you all to think like me.
I merely wished to point out that it is too easy (and a sign of arrogance) to criticise others. On the other hand, it takes a lot of courage (or perhaps a deathwish) to find flaws within yourself.
(That was just a thought. I might be wrong. It would not be the first time I am mistaken.)
Do you really think society is crumbling? I know that you should object to those who say society is in a continuing state of advancement, but isn’t the other extreme position of society crumbling equally unlikely? Just a thought.
You’re certainly correct that intellectual thuggery can just be a kneejerk reaction and sometimes criticism can be done for its only sake. But that’s not really a catch-all defence for someone criticising your ideas.
But again Gary, I’m not quite sure what you’re objecting to- undserving people making money, market based pricing systems, or sophisticated rhetoric encouraging people to buy things. Don’t think there’e neccessrily anything wrong with buying things, as long as its not your reason for existence. Although, damn, I love my Powerbook.
Sorry, please ignore the last paragraph, it was childish.
Do you really find advertsing that threatening? It’s advancement into personal mental space is worrying, but it’s not mandatory to watch it. Yet.
Yeah, I find it disturbing because at its heart is manipulation and not truth. I would have no problem with advertising that simply stated what the product is, what it does, where you can purchase it from and how much it costs (plus maybe the odd scantily clad woman… just kidding!) but I don’t see why I need to see a smiling David Beckham flashing before my eyes to tell me which mobile phone I should own. Etcetera.
This associating products with the idea of a perfect (or better… happier…) life is dangerous, as well. When you buy the phone and you are still not David Beckham, then what? You have to go out and buy some other shit to get you a few steps closer. And then what?
If you want the shit for the shit’s sake then go ahead and buy it, of course! I just don’t want to be constantly told what’s cool and what will get me there (wherever there is) if I shell out the cash that they will in turn put towards getting me to buy more stuff.
And this idea of escaping it (switching off the box) is sadly not true. Look around you and you will see that it is everywhere. Who made it okay for billboard posters to get between my eyes and my view of the sky? On freeways and such… what used to be wide open spaces! I have no choice there and I have no choice in many places.
Strangely enough, one such place is at any Olympic Games event. I went to see an olympic football game in Melbourne when the Sydney Olympics were on and they had to take all of the advertising down from the mighty stadium, the MCG. Having been to that stadium all my life (from a very young age when I had no idea what I was reading on those signs but it was still going in - the syringe effect as it is known in media and cultural studies) and the absence of any advertising was an eery yet wonderful site.
It’s everywhere… that’s the point. You can’t escape it and you never were nor ever will be given that choice.
Lastly… paying loads of money to buy clothing that advertises a product for the company (IE Nike costs more because it has the Nike emblem on it) is the most ingenius and ridiculous idea that ever came to man or woman. You’re paying more to do their job and hoist their sales!!! To advertise their product!!!Ridiculous!!!
I just witnessed a dead end culture CLASH at the doctors reception desk.
A turkish woman was registering as a new patient and making an appointment, and the receptionist asked her
do you need a translator?
The woman went huh?
I said DO you need a TRANS-L-A-T-O-R
huh?
Fucking hell rachel can you help me [Rachel]
Hi, she’s TRYING to ask if you need a TURKISH translator or not. DO YOU WANT A TR- fucking hell stupid bitch
I’m sorry I don-
what we MEAAAAN is do you WANT someone to change ENGLISH into TURKISH for you.
and the patient left, in the end.
I visited a DVD store the other day - obnoxiously loud advertising blaring from speakers mounted throughout the store….’CRASH…(AMERICAN ANNOUNCER’S VOICE) The Kranks have decided not to have Christmas this year….etc.’
I stuck my fingers in my ears and looked in vain for a suitable film to hire. They seemed to have forty million copies of the latest big-budget flops, but only one copy of Dr.Strangelove, and that buried deep amongst the ‘new to DVD’ titles.
If I found this barrage of sound-grabs from crap films annoying, on a small enough loop to repeat within ten minutes, I felt better after one look at the poor schmoe behind the counter . He probably quotes ‘Seabiscuit’ bites in his sleep.
Who is this in-house advertising aimed at? Presumably the people in the DVD store are there to hire DVD’s already? It beggars belief that it is pure coincidence the only films advertised in this manner were schlocky tacky bits of poo,
It’s interesting the use of the word manipulative. I;d describe it as such if it made you buy something against your will. I don’t think advertising does that; if it did I’d have a huge number of cars. I think it influences you when you’ve made a decision to spend money already (the I’m going shopping today idea, what shall I buy) or to choose between products. Product launches are an interesting example of this- getting people to buy new things is quite difficult. Advertising probably contributes to a things=happiness idea, but I don’t think its the sole driver. Lack of interest in anything else to give meaning, a rejection of previously held beliefs, and an unwillingness to admit something matters to you probably are more important. I think it’s more that advertising can manipulate that belief but it didn’t start it, something else did. What do you think?
What makes it extra difficult is that things are part of what makes us happy, its the belief that its the only thing or most important that’s corrosive.
I don’t know if the invasion of public space trend will continue to a Futurama level of dream invasion or be reversed. There are some interesting debates within the advertising industry about what to do, both pragmatically and ethically. Depends if the goverment keeps selling it as well as there being buyers.
One of my favourite future possible clashes will be between the US hip-hop community with logos, jewellery and conspicous consumption and liberal intellectuals telling them they shouldn’t have those things as they’re bad for them as we know from experience, and we should deny other that experience for their own good.
What’s the syringe effect then?
The guy behind the blackspot campaign, and the anti-advertising magazine whose escapes me- culture jammers? adblockers? anyway, he wrote a book that says that the prescence of advertising everywhere contributes to mental illness- have you read it? Not sure it was universally agreed on.
Oh, if you spak Chinese, their companies have no notion of branding yet and so have ads that show pcitures of the factory, a brief company history and simple descriptions. You might like it
I’m reading a book at the moment that suggests that watching television puts the mind into an Alpha state (similar to that of meditation or hypnosis) - something to do with the brain not being able to process the dots on the screen as what they are (indiviual dots) because they move too fast (think subliminal messages) and so stops trying to. But unlike in meditation where the initial idea is to unclutter the mind, this process is exploited in television to show the mind new images when it is more succeptible to them (similar to hypnosis). This means (it is suggested) that all television advertising that you see (in fact all images that you view on TV) are projected straight into you subconcious because your conciousness doesn’t have enough time to deal with the individual images themselves. While this may not mean that you feel compelled to buy a Big Mac or a toyota, it does mean that without choosing to you are walking around with those images in your head, which leads to the recognition effect of advertising (e.g. seeing Tony The Tiger in Sainsbury’s - recognising brands), and I think the implication is that people are more disposed towards things they recognise, possibly because they feel safer with it and it is less challenging. and so they MIGHT be more likely to buy that thing, or at least consider it as an especially viable purchase.
pretty insidious, huh? and if the recognition factor works for advertising, I suppose the implication is that it will work for anything on television. Think the news, soap operas, political broadcasts..etc. If you watch a soap and see an actor walking down the street in real life, most people’s first reaction would be to equate him/her with the character they play on TV, which I expect is why “characters”/actors get abuse, love letters..etc from fans. What about politicians? While no one was surprised that Bush got in for a second term, was he really the best man for the job? or was it just that his image was more implanted in people’s minds? He’d been around for longer, his face had been on television more. While people’s concious minds may have been undecided, perhaps their unconcious minds were telling them that he was a safe bet because of the recognition effect - they had more images of him.
So if these things are true, would you say that advertising (on TV) in its present form is morally wrong, because of the effects it has on people and because people are unaware of its effect (or cannot choose the effect it has on them)? and if so how about the medium of television as a whole? While its true that we believe we have the option to switch it off or look away, what about the images in advert breaks around films we want to see..etc, and how about kids? - they would find it harder to differentiate the fact from fiction and are more succeptible to images and ideas. If their parents aren’t always around to control exactly what they watch, they’re going to absorbing 1000s of images a week.
Only a couple of years ago the McDonald’s brand was valued in the US at $26 billion (approximately 66% of company value) - not sure how much now - but it shows just how important the image/recogntion factor is to people. The author of publication ‘Kids as customers’ says “the key is getting children to see a firm…in much the same way as [they see] mom or dad”, and the founder of McDonald’s explained “A child who loves our TV commercials and brings her grandparents gives us two more customers.” Its simple and obvious marketing stuff, but when the typical American child (I don’t have UK figures) spends one and a half months watching TV every year its pretty obvious how much of an effect images seen on television could have (especially when you couple this with the idea of television as a medium that utilises hypnotic effects)! So once again, I wonder is the continued acceptance of television in its present state in our society, a good thing? and if not, what are our alternatives?
Well, the big question is if those things are true. My physiology is a bit rusty but as I recall the links between brain activity and mental states are sort of linked but its not really known how. The brain does process some information even without paying attention to it, but I don’t think it goes into long term memory, which I assume would be neccessary to be involved in any action occurring five seconds after seeing the advert. What’s the book? It’s an interesting argument but it makes quite a lot of leaps that I’m not totally sure of.
Ignoring all the above, would it be a morally wrong to influence people without their knowledge? Kneejerk I say yes, the problem is that some studies suggest this happens outside of advertising as well. Some studies have been done of an individual’s charisma level- highly charismatic people will change the mood of a room (sad people have a happy highyl charismatic person come in, they cheer up, happy people have a highly charismatic sad person come in, they all go sad. Low charisma scorers don’t have this effect) So internal emotional states, which we often hold to be self-driven are differentially affected by others. I suppose my point is that if the phenomena I described is true, you’re influenced by other people all the time possibly against your will. Does that make the charismatic morally wrong by existing?
I think it comes down to your ideas about free will. If you believe that people are fully capable of making autonmous decisions, and that that is a human right/morally good, then any infringement on that to make you do things against your will will be morally wrong. However, if we have much less free will than we thought it becomes more difficult to say that being prevented from making a decision is wrong as we’re prevented anyway in many ways, and by each other. So we shift the question to not of being influenced, but what your influenced to do. Is it wrong to try and influence people into buying things? Comes back to how much you really do, and I don’t think anyone has the answer to that.
I think you need to be quite careful about a passive consumption idea of television, as there’s a reasonable amount of literature contradicting this assumption. Advertising to children? It’s very tricky, as you have to be older than 7 or 8 to distinguish between ads and normal TV programs, so there are serious questions of exploitation and indoctrination. But it might be worth considering that indoctriantion of the young isn’t just from television to get them to buy things. What’s more important is how destructive the message to buy things is?
The link between feeding images to consumers and consumption exists: the money thrown into advertising would not be thrown there if it didn’t work. Advertising has grown and evolved (rapidly) over time and is still a fairly young blight on our society… its full effects can not be truly known.
Increasing cases of mental diseases (such as anorexia nervosa) over the course of half a century are coming from somewhere. I agree with you that there are multiple factors for why the crisis that is human existence is mass-occurring but this beast that is advertising (which perpetuates and promotes and makes billions out of our crisis) is largely going untamed.
Advertising is usually (increasingly) abstract. It relies on ideas that are naturally appealing and it floods and surrounds the advertised product with those images and sounds. The actual advertised product is often quite perfunctory in the whole equation.
In Oz a few years back there was a brief phenomenon known as blip-verts. Don’t know if they existed here as well. They were about two seconds long. Short burst images and sounds. It was impossible to make out any kind of detail but a product’s brand was briefly seared into your memory. They wouldn’t waste their time and money on this. They know it works.
This blip-verting was symptomatic of the business of affecting psychology to sell a product. The government soon after banned them, can’t remember the exact terminology of why but it was clearly because they were deemed as unreasonably manipulative.
The message to buy things is fine… the song and dance promotion of the perfect life that comes with it - that advertising relies on - is not. To knock down the tower of disillusionment start with this almighty wall.
It’s like Lenin said, “I am the Walrus…”
This space for rent I liked reading your comment- it’s full of information. I also agree that we do need to continue questioning the label ‘morally wrong’ before applying it so slapdash. It is not enough to say that anything a big corporation does is morally wrong on a world scale simply because it’s a big corporation. Blipverts could be funded by companies that you find morally disagreeable, but to simply insist that consumers (and everyone, always) are ‘victimised’ sounds naive and won’t help at all. Advertising is a fact of life, particularly in the big cities where more and more sophisticated means grow up. Sometimes I think the problem with the more back-to-grass-roots-left is their refusal to accept the way the world operates today. I mean, wouldn’t a series of hacked counter-blipverts saying ‘Don’t Buy!’ make the point more than shouting at people on the bus who eat Nestle?
I don’t mean this to be a provocative comment. I simple mean when technology expands so far I think you have to ride with it to even be in the fight. Not that that’s a good thing - I just think it.
Have you watched Max Headroom?
The book is ‘Four Arguments for the elimination of television’. I haven’t finished reading it yet, and most of the conclusions/ideas above are what I personally have derived from the book (which may explain the leaps in argument that Space for Rent suggested!)
I agree with Space that people (charismatic..etc) obvously affect other people, but I don’t agree that this effect can be compared to a great extent to the effect advertising has.
Advertising (we’re talking predominantely T.V adverts) is all about single brand images and very simple messages. If the idea of the product can’t be communicated within about 10 seconds (as in blip-verts) then it probably won’t work in an advert. Image is king of the advert. Sound is Queen. All the other senses are largely ignored in advertising. An idea of taste/feeling can be communicated, but the actual taste/feeling cannot. In actual human interaction, for a start, all senses are involved. One may notice someone’s perfume/aftershave for example. Also meeting a real person is obviously a more complete experience. All the senses tend to be involved, and also your opinion of that person is constantly changing. It’s an organic process. You have the opportunity to change your view of that person, literally and figuratively. You may form an initial opinion of them across a room, and then later talk to them for half an hour and form entirely different opinions. Television doesn’t allow you to do this. Its influence on you is already dictated. The image that you recieve of a product or whatever doesn’t allow for a different view of it. While your opinions of the product may change over time, the actual image/brand will remain the same for you. It can’t become more than the image that has been given you. That’s the one that you’ll always associate with a product. If you’re questioning the hypnosis/implanting images theory, try an experiment, and see what images the words McDonald’s, Mars, Coke, Porche..etc conjure for you in your mind. You get the logo or an image of the actual product right? And that image/logo is almost certainly something you saw in an advert once, right? That’s the initial thing you see, rather than feelings or ideas about the product. even if you hate the product, your predominant association with the product is its image and there ain’t much you can do about it. Then you can try the experiment again with people who you know (friends etc) - is an image of them as clear as the product logos? do you get more than one image? is it more based on the feeling you have for a person or your view of them? Is it not a richer idea of a person? Maybe you get images of actual events..etc.
Basically I don’t think you can draw that many parralels between the type of influence you get from people you meet and the influence you get from products you see in advertisments, apart from that on a basic level they do both make an impression on you. I think the images that the separate encounters leave you with are totally different feelings/images/ideas.So I don’t agree with you when you imply that advertising affects someone in the same way as meeting a charismatic person. The fact that the image of an advert is so one-sided and intense and one does not really have the opportunity to explore it, challenge it or ignore it, is, I think, what I object to in some ways (perhaps ‘object’ is the wrong word, perhaps I should say it is something that interests me).
However I do accept that this is part of the society we live in, its how it works. But the title of this post was something along the lines of ’signs that our culture has lost its way’, and I thought that perhaps television advertising is one of those. I think that perhaps it would be better if at least people were a bit more aware of what effect advertising really had on them. and I do object to such relentless television advertising directed at children.
I don’t want to, uber-hacker or nay, blip-vert my ideas into people’s subconcious. It’s that that I oppose.
Also…
To “accept the way the world operates today” is as much to kowtow to people in more powerful positions than yourself as it is to be “realistic”.
The want to change “the way the world operates today” is not necessarily a (grass-roots-esque) reversal but potentially the most glorius kind of advancement.
I just think you can’t harp on that all advanacements are dangerous and threatening. Do you like electronic music? The same technology that offers blipverts offers computer games, virtual reality, CGI and MP3s - let alone the actually useful things in medicine and science I can’t name.
I am sure you don’t like electronic music, or computer games. But I do. And so hence my different opinion.
ADVANCEMENTS I meant. Advance.
None of that makes any sense. The technology that created blip-verts is over a hundred years old - it is simply a few short frames of footage. “Blip-verts” are a contemporary, psychological CONCEPT within the advertising world that doesn’t rely on modern technology in any way…only modern sentiments and lifestyles and a manipulation thereof.
I don’t like electronic music, I quite like computer games, MP3’s are a convenient and wonderful way of listening to music, nano-technology fascinates me, I would love for the planet’s space program to become advanced enough to visit other systems, I am in adoration of the wonder that is the internet that allows free speech to all and lets me communicate with my family overseas… etcetera!
I have no issue whatsoever with technology and am flumoxed as to how you came to that conclusion from what I have discussed. I like the future… I just can’t stand manipulation on a grand scale. Very different arguments here, Flint.
I don’t think I was arguing. I think advertising is clever and interesting.
I don’t buy much stuff.
You are exactly right about blipverts they are the same as riding past the adverts in a tube tunnel while the train leaves the platform. It isn’t entirely about technology, but discoveries about memory and impulses go hand in hand with technology to generate ideas about advertising.
I think my megalomaniacal idea is that if, as you say - blipverts target only modern sentiments and lifestyles and a manipulation thereof - then if we all could (like I have) bent my sentiments out of the radar of the adevertsing, then we would be free to feel interested in it as aconcept. Granted, it would then become non-existant.
I suppose it is an elitist thing isn’t it? I mean I have the liberty to consider advertising and cultivate a self-aware immunity to it. Advertising often targets people who haven’t been prompted to consider these things. These people usually have less money. This is where my morals about advertising DO kick in: where the intellectual bourgeois use it to exploit the poor or adolescent.
But, free from these moral hinderances (which is isn’t, but if it was) I suppose I find it fascinating in a more far-reaching way like This Space for Rent. Fascinating because it relates to manipulations and persuasions, the dark arts of politics and commerce. Arts which you have to know to spot and outwit.
So I think I meant technology in a broader sense than I originally indicated: technologies of manipulation. They exist. I think the clever can outwit them. Like - my example - counterhackers.
OK, lets get the mental machine gun. Please feel free to use that as a quote in later posts to show my difficult, argumentative nature.
DaMan, I had a go at the experiment, and I think what I found is that the images and associations of people and products were quite wide-ranging, logos and otherwise and both positive and negative. I also can’t remember the Porsche logo (is it red and green?) This obviously isn’t a perfect test, as I might have been trying to do that but I’m not sure you’re right in saying we just absorb advertising, whereas we don’t everything else. Think of any art you’ve ever seen, and then think if you interpreted it the way the author intended (assuming you know) Or think about the times you’ve been misunderstood. Getting people to take only what you want from an idea or image is I believe, very difficult, and advertising doesn’t do it. And i’m not sure if it tries anymore, although I think you’re right that it did.
Gary, your comment that the money thrown into advertising would not be thrown there if it didn’t work- I love the myth of the rational investor! How advertsing works is a different matter, and one I don’t think we’ve really answered. I think you need to know how something works to understand and judge it.
The other point I was slightly clumsily trying to make is that the the attempts advertising makes to influence us have been around in other forms for thousands of years, rhetoric, style, snappy phrasing, composoition and not over repeating yourself. I think it’s only when you’re using that to disguise a lie that its a bad thing and even so a part of me loves it anyway, if its a lie everyone knows is false. And even if they don’t, I still like the craft.
And not all advertising is lies. Some is, and is generally stopped, and some tries like blipverts is morally dodgy. But not all. It’s disingenous to suggest so. What’s your opinion on charity advertsing? I don’t find it manipulative, it just reminds me that its good to give to charity. I occasioanlly feel guilty from watching the adverts which I don’t enjoy, but I don’t think the advertising is morally wrong or that I’ve been manipulated, just someone’s pushed the right buttons in the right order.
I have a suspicion that a lot of other industries, arts, political movements, theories and ideas try to influence and attract using the same techniques as advertising. So shouldn’t you look at those as well?
I find much charity advertising just plain stupid. Every month the RSPCA sends me a pen and batch of leaflets. Some poor panda could have eaten them for chrissakes.
I love the advert outside the PDSA shop in Clifton Down, Bristol, which has a photo of a mournful kitten in a bandage with the caption “Dennis hates us”. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
I think the copywriter’s arch-enemy is called Dennis. Like how in Richard Curtis films, all characters called Bernard are gently teased with a touch of upper middle class wit.
There was a Canadian woman who had a particularlu unpleasent breakup with a boyfriend. After she repeated what had happened to a variety of her writer friends, they had him (undisiguised, his name and description) killed in a variety of gruesome, unpleasent ways in their soon to be released novels.
I hate you.
It is an interesting thing that practically all charity adverts on television are narrated by men. A decision has been made that a male voice is more likely to convince both men a women alike to part with their twelve pounds a month. It’s a big shitter that they use ‘real’ shop floor employees to advertise B&Q and multiple other products. This is due to the rise in reality TV shows creating a market for using gawky uncharasmatic people to sell multinational products to gawky and uncharasmatic armchair consumers. People find actors offputting. It puts me out of a jerkin’ job.
Hey! I finally got a lead role!
not a job jerkin’ you gawky jerkin ghirkins
Hey! I finally got a lead role!
Why oh why can’t we go back to the glory days of using animals - particularly apes or monkeys - in advertising. It’s the taste!
My local pub seems on some Saturdays to be populated by a number of people who have mistaken themselves for models in some advertisement - they flick their hair out of their eyes when it wasn’t in, stare around in a studiously aloof manner, and speak in curious sound-grabs that are mercifully less than thirty seconds in length. Is it a coincidence many are garbed in Tommy’s Tee’s, Diesel Jeans and such? Ads. on T.V are an annoyance, the debate surrounding the ethics of advertising can be equally so sometimes, but people who speak and act in the style of the advertising schmoozers is making me want to stay in…and watch T.V.