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Yesterday in Glover Park:
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Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
Yard Sale – Honesty in Advertising
Sunday, November 9th, 2014Better Thought Next Time, No. 5 (Allstate Advertisement)
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011.
The advertisement sponsored Allstate Insurance Company, below, appears on page 50 of the July 25, 2011 edition of Time magazine. In it Allstate lends its support to the Save Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection Act, federal legislation intended to save teen lives lost to car accidents. I have no quarrel with the sentiment of the ad. What I do have to wonder is, What was the copywriter thinking when she/he came up with this headline? —
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Here’s how I imagine the typical reader encounters and absorbs the ad’s message.
After turning page 49 to look at pages 50-51, the reader likely looks briefly at the left side of the two-page spread, her glance taking in the picture of a prescription drug container spilling its capsule-like contents. OK, the reader now has placed the idea of “drugs” fresh in her consciousness. Then, looking up at the first line of copy (the attention-grabbing words in the largest font), the reader sees the first line’s phrase: “The #1 killer of teens”. The reader blends those two items (drugs + top-teen-killer) and finds they’re compatible. Yes, she’s aware teens die from abuse of drugs, and it’s a big problem. It sounds reasonable to assume drugs are the top killer of teens.
Then comes the writer’s “Gotcha!” moment and it’s a good one: a switcheroo. It tells her she’s mistaken. The split-second link her mind forged is wrong. She looks more carefully at the capsules spilling from the bottle and sees they are miniature cars. At best (the ad writer ought to have predicted) she thinks this odd, but she’ll keep this oddity in mind. But the text calls for her to please keep reading, to be set straight with the correct answer. Helpfully, not only does the second line reveal drugs is NOT the answer to the riddle, but the words guide her in the right direction with a teaser. Not the final answer, mind you, but a clue that will help her find the answer: Think of something unrelated to “a dealer.”
So: the top teen killer is not drugs since their usual source is a dealer (at least if the copywriter wants her to envision hard drugs, and exclude patent drugs stolen from a parent’s medicine cabinet). The answer is some causal agent that does NOT come from a dealer. Think. Think. OK, the reader’s mind goes into second gear, running through the possibilties. Guns? Suicidal behaviors? Violence perpetrated against teens? All good choices; she’ll keep them handy. The clue also helps eliminate possibilities. For example, one not good answer, since it violates the criteria (that a “dealer” cannot be involved), is cars. The majority of cars, new cars certainly, still come from dealers. As for acquiring a used car, this often means checking out the goods of a used car dealer. “Car + dealer” are terms linked in the human mind because the two terms are connected as a matter of routine commerce. So, the top killer of teens is not cars, the reader concludes.
Oops.
It’s hard for me to believe the advertisement’s copywriter intended to confuse and frustrate and anger the reader with a second switch-back (one of ugly temper: “Ha-ha! I fed you a false premise! Try and keep up with the game, sucker!”).
Which means, while this advertisement doesn’t qualify as an Epic Fail, it sure is a plain failure.
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i live. i ride. i am. i yi yi.
Sunday, December 6th, 2009The first six words in the title of this post — if you count each un-capitalized “i” as a word — is the tagline of a new advertising campaign for Jeep vehicles. The campaign’s 30-second TV commercials have not been well received by media observers. See, for example, comments here, here, and here. Jeep is also placing “i live, i ride, i am” advertisements in magazines, and in my opinion these are truly, madly, deeply, bad. I’m talking about text so awful it defies parody. Here is a two-page spread in the December 14, 2009 edition of TIME magazine (pages 34-35):
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The words that appear in faint gray type in the upper right quadrant — the text providing the premise for the punchy tagline — reads as follows:
i’ve been through hell and high water
i can text but prefer to talk
i read Keats and wear cleats
i think toy dogs are ok
but big dogs rule
i get my “fresh catch” from
the sushi bar sometimes
i wear all earth tones,
but mud is my favorite.
Yes, those lower-case “i”s are indigenous to the copy. It wouldn’t surprise me if a phalanx of Apple attorneys were suspiciously eyeing those “i”s. It also wouldn’t surprise me if those same lawyers offer Chrysler, in lieu of crippling litigation, a friendly settlement proposal calling for minor changes in the tag line:
i live. i ride. i phone. i pod. i mac. i am.
But for now let’s give credit where credit is due. It was the Mad Men at Jeep’s advertising firm who came up with the idea of eschewing margins in favor of pseudo-poetically centering each of the nine descriptive lines. And it was their idea to italicize the word sometimes — a nuance sure to render many a reader weak-kneed.
I confess I was puzzled, however, to find the bold lack of punctuation surrendering to convention just when the statement reaches its final two lines. It’s as if the copywriter, almost done with the task, was suddenly touched by the ghost of her tenth grade English teacher, who whispered a plea: A comma and a period, please!
On the other hand, who among us can resist forming a wry smile at the rhyming of Keats with cleats? Clever.
As for the trendy sentiments expressed in the ad, yes, they’re sophomoric. But so what? (The visiting ghost came from the tenth grade, remember?) Maybe the whole thing is an homage to the malarkey found in the Manifesto of Thompson Hotels?
But enough about words. The bigger oddity is the photo in the left panel of the ad. This, presumably, is the Keatsian survivor of the fabled watery hell (or was it hellish waters?). This is a man who does not know for sure whether tonight’s dinner will include sushi. Can you blame him for scowling at us? Of course not.
But I wonder: Why was he asked to take a pose that is in-your-face and awkward, macho and goofy? Hey, I know the arm swing’s a guy thing; I do it too. But here’s the risk: Someone will be tempted to suggest this guy’s next gig ought to be on stage playing opposite Katisha (She: “My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.” He: “Ditto my left, baby.”)
Is it just me, or do you also find the more you stare at the picture the more his bare forearm looks like a raw turkey drumstick attached to his left ear? (OK, maybe it’s just too close to Thanksgiving for me.) Whether it be a drumstick or an arm, the fact is the thing’s projecting forward from pictorial space, and none too elegantly. As artists will testify, foreshortening can be a bitch. See, for example, Durer’s posthumously published treatise, De Symmetria. So why did the creator of the ad go there, and why compound the problem by featuring a limb that’s freakishly fingerless?
At least when we watch Simon Cowell’s bad habit of scratching the back of his neck, we see him in motion (as in this video at 1:41 – 1:43) and we get to see his hand, as shown in this screen shot:
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[As for the title of this post, if you want to read more about “i yi yi” (aka, “Aye Yi Yi”), an expression used to show frustration, hopelessness, sadness, annoyance, click here and here.]