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Your
Ad Could Be Here
by Mad Dog
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Their main tactics
are to tell us a product is better, cheaper, faster, easier, newer,
hipper, or that it will improve our sex life. If they can convince us it
will give us a better, cheaper, faster, easier, newer, hipper sex life
we’ll buy a six-pack. |
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If you thought advertising
was hard to ignore before, look out. Or should I say don’t look out,
because just when you thought they’d found every possible place to
slap an ad someone came up with a new one. It’s like a Whack-a-Mole
game except we’re the ones being knocked in the head and they keep
walking away with the prize, which not so coincidentally is our hard
earned money.
We’ve become inured to seeing ads
on TV, in magazines, and on Web sites, bus stop benches, trash cans,
billboards, and just about anything that sits still for more than 20
seconds. Hell, they’ve even taken to imprinting ads in the sand at the
beach in the morning, just in case you’re one of those people who
doesn’t look up and see the airplanes beautifying the view by flying
back and forth trailing huge advertising banners. Grocery stores are
some of the worst offenders. There are ads on the edges of the shelves,
the dividers between the groceries at the checkout line, on the shopping
carts, and even printed on the floor. Now they’ll be in the parking
lot.
It’s true. A company called Nusign
Outdoor Media is replacing the concrete parking lot bumpers—you know,
those things you ram your front tires into, then look around sheepishly
hoping no one noticed—with hard plastic ones covered with ads. Their
Web site proudly says you “cannot click them off, switch them away,
toss them out or turn away from them while speeding past.” Wow, it
just doesn’t get any better than this, does it?
Whether
we like it or not, advertising is a part of life. An obnoxious part, but
a part. I have to say, though, that I don’t hold it against them
personally. After all, they’re just doing their job. And their job is
to help the economy. Lord knows it needs all the help it can get at the
moment.
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Those products you
see in movies and on TV are a sneaky form of advertising which has
existed for years and is becoming increasingly more popular. With the
movie studios and TV networks, not the consumer. |
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The economics
of advertising works like this: companies have to sell products in order
to stay in business. Hopefully they’re making something that we need,
though all too often they’re trying to sell completely useless items
to people who have more money than sense. You know, like us. So they
turn to an advertising agency. Their job is to convince us we need these
things when we don’t. Their main tactics are to tell us a product or
service is better, cheaper, faster, easier, newer, hipper, or that it
will improve our sex life. If they can convince us it will give us a
better, cheaper, faster, easier, newer, hipper sex life we’ll buy a
six-pack. Every day. Three hundred sixty-five days a year. For the rest
of our life.
The media runs advertisements
because, like everyone else in this scenario, they’re trying to stay
in business. After all, someone has to help them cover expenses. If it
wasn’t for paid ads the morning newspaper would cost a couple of
dollars, you’d have to take out a loan each time you wanted to listen
to a radio station for more than two hours, and The Jerry Springer
Show would be pay-per-view. The question is whether it would be
pay-per-show-view or pay-per-product-view.
Yes, those products you see in movies and on TV are a sneaky form
of advertising which has existed for years and is becoming increasingly
more popular. With the movie studios and TV networks, not the consumer.
Basically, companies pay to have their product appear on screen. It
shifted into high gear when E.T. ate Reese’s Pieces and sales
skyrocketed. The next thing you knew Austin Powers was drinking Heineken
and James Bond took to driving a BMW instead of an Aston Martin,
whipping out his VISA card, enjoying Smirnoff martinis (shaken not
stirred, of course), talking on an Ericcson cell phone, and wearing an
Omega watch. And you thought it was just because Pierce Brosnan happened
to like those things.
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Don’t be
surprised if you start seeing guests on Jerry Springer come on wearing
Everlast boxing gloves, Samantha on Sex and the City asks guys,
“You do have a Durex condom, don’t you?” |
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According to Variety, Dreamworks SKG set a record when
they raked in a whopping $25 million for product placement in Minority
Report. Apparently the minority part referred to the few seconds of
the film that didn’t show a paid product placement. Unfortunately they
squandered all that money paying Tom Cruise an oddly coincidental $25
million salary so—darn!—they didn’t have any left to give
us even a teeny tiny little price break on the ridiculous $8.75 ticket
cost.
Meanwhile on TV, Survivor
blatantly rewards challenge winners with heavily plugged VISA cards,
Doritos, Mountain Dew, and SUVs. Now it turns out that The Other Half,
an NBC talk show modeled after The View only with Dick Clark,
Danny Bonaduce, Dorian Gregory, and Mario Lopez playing the parts of
Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Star Jones, and Meredith Vieira
respectively, is selling sponsored segments. And—whoops!—forgetting
to mention it except for a quick flash during the closing credits. In
one segment Clorox paid so the hosts would play a housekeeping game with
the audience. In another Hyundai forked over money so a company
executive could offer—wink! wink!—car buying tips.
The lines are going to continue to
blur since advertisers are complaining that people are ignoring
commercials more than ever, flipping the channel, closing down pop-up
windows at Web sites, and even spreading blankets over ads which are
embossed in the sand at the beach. So don’t be surprised if they get
sneakier and you start seeing guests on Jerry Springer come on wearing
Everlast boxing gloves, Samantha on Sex and the City asks guys,
“You do have a Durex condom, don’t you?”, and Tony Soprano
declares that if you don’t hit someone with a Glock 9mm you can
“Fuggedahboutit.” Now if I could only get these manufacturers to
start paying me to mention them in my columns…….hmmmmmm.
©2002 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them, they're in between the ads.
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