Plainly I should go into advertising.

[davywavy]

The big advantage of not owning a TV is that a lot of popular culture passed me by. I've missed out on Big Brother, The X Factor, the Queen Vic blowing up in Eastenders and so much more and do you know what? I dont' feel that my life is any the smaller for it.

On the other hand, the downside of not owning a TV is that when I have access to one for a few days I find it has an irresistable siren lure. I slump in front of the dancing lights with a large supply of booze and nosh and spend a few days watching entranced and slowly expanding until my arse fills the armchair - which is how I just spend my weekend.
The television programming itself was fairly boring, but thatnks to freeview I had hundreds of channels with nothing on them, and by the time I'd surfed all the way around the horn and come back to where I'd started there was something else on which wasn't worth watching so as a pastime it...well, it passed the time.

Despite the telly being rubbish, the adverts were fascinating in a slow-motion-car-crash-horror sort of way. As media has expanded so the available budgets for TV advertising have declined, and boy, it shows. Possibly most irritating are the German/US adverts dubbed by British voice actors for the home market (note to advertisers: If you can't be fagged to make an advert for the British market, then I can't be fagged to buy your crap). After those there were the "We're really desperate to sell our product but have nothing unique to pitch" types. The best example I can think of was for some toilet cleaner or other (I forget which. Great advertising there, guys). The advert opens with some harried-looking housewife watching in horror whilst her pair of angelic, tousle-haired children do something stupid like drink from the toilet bowl, and then a gravelly-voiced voiceover says in a serious tone "Imagine what germs might lurk in your lavatory."

I'm sorry? Imagine what might happen? So the only sales message they could possibly think of for this product was to encourage people to pretend there might be something wrong with their bog? Some advertising creatives with names like Julian and Jocasta got paid a five figure sum for that. Even as I type steam is coming out of my ears and making noise like a train whistle.

However, my favourite current advert is one which I'm sure people have commented on before. It's this one from quickquid, who appear to be a gestalt entity formed from the merged bodies of mafia loan sharks and Gordon Brown's economic advisers. As usual, we see the harried housewife and the gravelly-voiced voiceover man (note to self - if I want a job in advertising, I need to start smoking more) saying in a serious tone "Bills piling up? Can't make it to the end of the month"? However, what he doesn't do is follow that up with sensible advice like "Stop spending so much money on crap and learn to budget, you imbeciles! Oh, and get rid of your television as well. You're obviously too stupid to own one." Instead, he goes on to suggest that you take out a short term loan at 2376% APR and then - in a masterpiece of understatement - goes on to suggest that this shouldn't be used as a long-term credit arrangement. Not unless you want to owe them your kidney in a fortnight, anyway.

Curious, I popped onto the quidquid website where they have a handy loan calculator and asked if I could borrow a pound until tomorrow. Of course, was the reply. You'll just have to repay £8 in the morning.
Now, when I was at university I was sensible with my cash and ended one year fairly flush meaning that I took that as an opportunity to loan-shark to my friends, but even I never tried to gouge that sort of return out of people. It all just makes me angry - not at the lenders (because criticising sharks for acting like sharks is pointless) but at schools which turn out people ill-educated enough to fall for this sort of crap.

So that's television advertising. If you ask me, we lost something when they banned cigarette advertising. Cigarettes are less harmful than 2376%APR, and they didn't half make better adverts.

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Speaking personally, I do most of my thinking with my genitals and I don't buy Lynx because it pongs something rotten.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Well, nobody ever made a loss by suggesting that their product would get saucy young girls fawning all over you.

Hang on, that gives me an idea!

HEY, EVERYONE! READING MY LIVEJOURNAL WILL GET YOU LAID!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It's my internet-pheromones, you know.

They're made out of crushed pigs testicles, which is why Pinky and Perky's voices never broke.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Isn't it kind of relieving that you don't enjoy being advertised to? In an abstract but measurable way, it exists to take money off you.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I disagree; good advertising exists to make me aware of products which I might want to purchase in free and fair exchange by which both vendor and purchaser benefit. The state exists to take money off me as I have no choice over whether to give them my money or not, whilst I can decline market opportunities as it pleases me.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

In a very real way, advertising is how you pay for the media where you see it. Other parties benefit from you having their ideas in your head, and the value of that benefit is offset against the cost of producing and delivering the media.

So if you're watching an especially good TV show with especially high production costs, and you see an especially entertaining advert, imagine how valuable the ideas entering your head must be, and think about who's going to end up paying for them to be there. If you can't find an obvious answer, it's probably you.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I do know the principle of advertising funding - it's how I make my living after all! However, I disagree that it's a rule that advertising exists to take your money off you as that implies the purchaser doesn't have free will in the transaction. The only such transaction I can think of where money is taken irrespective of the desire of the purchaser is in state 'enterprise'.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Let's say it costs a pound per viewer to broadcast an episode of Poirot on ITV3, and ITV are prepared to operate at cost. The adverts in the breaks are for Head and Shoulders, Pepperami Minis, Churchill car insurance, Gaviscon, Burger King, Activia yoghurt, The Carphone Warehouse and Boots.

From this, based on what I am and am not likely to buy, I can only assume that between them, Head and Shoulders and Boots get a probabilistic pound more of my money than they would have for every episode of Poirot I watch. All the others are either unapplicable to me or products of last resort. I'm brand-loyal to Head and Shoulders because of my terrible dandruff, and there's only so much shampoo you can get through, so the lion's share of that probabilistic pound is probably going to Boots.

I've known about the two brands since before I could tell the time. I'd obviously like to think, as would we all, that I'm not swayed by advertising. I like to imagine I'm somehow free-riding off all the gullible fools spending hundreds of pounds each on Activia and Pepperami Minis, which they then need to follow up with Gaviscon, but how can I know?

So actually I'd like to revise my assertion that we should prefer to not like advertising. I should prefer to enjoy advertising for things I know I'm unlikely to buy, and to dislike adverts for things I know I want.

I am now experiencing a heightened paranoia about Boots, who have stopped being a chemist and started being a vehicle for me to pay for watching David Suchet solve imaginary murders.

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

Surely it is better to think that the company which launched the lame advert is in fact losing money because of it - they are paying for the TV show you are watching, without gaining the benefits that result from good advertising.

Of course, you have to seperate out 'not good' advertising (adverts which fail to convey the purpose/advantage of the product, or simply do not make you want it) with 'bad' advertising (adverts which are terrible, but retain brand recognition in your head simply through being bad).

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently those short term loans are aimed at compulsive gamblers

H

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever bought something just because it had a good/funny advert.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

That's what everyone says, though, isn't it?

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Obviously, I do use branded products but usually because I actually like them (after having tried alternatives) and not because an advert told me it would make me attractive to women/invincible/10 feet tall.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

But we don't like things in isolation. We like things because we have positive responses to them, and advertising artificially attaches positive responses to products, even if (especially if) we're not consciously aware of it.

The most pervasive advertising doesn't make any claims. It elicits an emotion in you and then works the product into it, sometimes almost as an afterthought. The next time you see the product, you experience a shadow of that emotional response.

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

I enjoy adverts too, a good one can tell a story, make you think, make you smile or provoke some other emotion while raising product awareness, all within 30 seconds. There have been some staggering adverts in the past, Ones that spring to mind would by COG, the apple mac 1984 advert, the Guinness 'It not easy being a dolphin' and the Tango Blackcurrant advert.

But, like any art form, it has it's fair share of hacks and, with more and more channels, crappy adverts become more and more prevalent. It's a shame, but their are still some great adverts out there.

Not that I watch them much. Can't remember the last time I put ITV on, and I rarely watch Channel Four either.

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

I suppose these loan sharks are like debt collectors, Nigerian spammers and bank account phishers; with usurious rates like that, they only need about one person in every million to fall into their trap in order to keep themselves in Rolls Royces and villas in the Maldives...