False Advertising, Cultural Narrative Edition

Adding to my earlier post today .... Have you seen this Simpson’s Coca-Cola ad? I think it ran during last year’s Super Bowl. I missed it then, but they’re playing it at the movie theater now, so I’ve seen it a gazillion times:



What’s interesting to me is that during this current recession, billionaires didn’t go broke. The “C. Montgomery Burnses” of the country got giant bailouts from the taxpayers and are safely ensconced in their mansions surrounded by their family heirlooms. The people getting yanked out of their homes and selling mementos at the flea market are the middle class and lower class folks -- the people the ad shows enjoying the simple, carefree joys of a day in the park and a Coke.

So why does a corporate multinational like Coca Cola choose to present our current dilemma in this way? Was this rewriting of history deliberate? This misrepresentation of facts to put the wealthy in the same boat as everyone else: intentional? A blatant attempt to change the cultural narrative before our very eyes? I mean, unless you’re really paying attention, you might not even notice.

It’s all very fascinating.

Can You Really Buy An Election?

I’ve been pondering all of the corporate money flooding this election: the direct donations from outfits like Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp to the Republican Governor’s Assn., the corporate donations to groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the corporate PACs, and the bazillionaire self-financed candidates. And then there are the ads from liberal groups: the Democratic campaign committees, unions, and the like. Most of the donations are going to Republican candidates, and while Democratic groups are certainly spending money -- and asking for it, lord God almighty how they are asking -- the GOP has been outspending Democrats significantly.

I have a couple of thoughts on this. For one thing, I have to wonder if these corporate donations are the best use of those millions. Is it really worthwhile, spending all of that money trying to get Republicans elected? Funneling all that cash to the GOP via PAC donations and Chamber donations and “grants” to corporate front groups like the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation? Really? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just deal with whatever regulation it is the Democrats supposedly want, or increase the fuel economy on the car you’re manufacturing (and which the American public wants too, I might add)? Is it really a good return on investment to spend tens of millions every two years trying to swing an election?

The general assumption is that they wouldn’t be spending this kind of money if they didn’t think it worthwhile, but let’s face it: American corporations do all sorts of crazy, stupid shit. New Gap logo, anyone?

(And here's another thought: if the majority of Americans really believed in Free Market Fairies and the tyranny of Big Government and the dangers of the deficit, would they really need to spend so much money selling us these ideas?)

Maybe it was a smart expenditure before the good ol’ days of Citizens United, when we weren’t talking about so many zeroes on every campaign donation and every Karl Rove and Karl Rove wannabe didn’t have his or her hand out demanding money for this or that organization, PAC, think tank, foundation, etc. I mean, seriously. Wouldn’t you people rather be expanding your factories and hiring people with that money or something? Or giving yourselves fat bonuses?

Just wondering.

Here’s something else. It’s looking like $2 billion will be spent on campaigns this election, a record for a midterm election. We’ve all been griping about the money coming from foreign sources but nobody ever finishes the sentence: no one stops to think where this money is going. The vast majority of it is going to buy television air time.

Elections are a media cash cow, from the ad agencies making the buys to the cable, network and local television stations cashing the checks. Where is all of this Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads money going? Straight to Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and the rest.

Well no wonder campaign finance reform and public financing of elections never got off the ground. No wonder our news information sucks. Who stands to benefit from an undecided voting public, an electoral horse race in every district, hotly contested primaries orchestrated by a media-created Tea Party "movement"? I mean, think about it.

Since I started writing this post this morning I have received seven solicitations for political donations and one phone call. Swear to God. Here’s one from the DCCC:

There are just hours left before our most critical deadline of the election. The amount of money in the bank tonight determines tomorrow's television spending -- this is the FINAL time we can make adjustments to our ad buy for the final week.

Enough already, people. I have just one question for the DCCC, Organizing For America, the Chamber of Commerce, and everyone else with skin in this game: do TV ads even work anymore? Other than getting a candidate’s name and image out there, of course, but does anyone think they will sway a voter’s opinion on a candidate?

For years we’ve been hearing that product marketers are getting away from traditional ad buys to things like “guerilla marketing” and “branding.” Consumers have been assaulted with advertising for decades and I think we’re all savvy enough to assume the information in a television ad is going to be bullshit. Just because Tide says its detergent is the most fabulous thing out there doesn’t mean anyone believes it. Why would anyone think we believe political campaign ads?

Here’s what’s interesting to me: there are thousands of people who believe Barack Obama is a Muslim of Kenyan birth. I don’t recall seeing one television ad telling people that information, yet somehow it managed to spread around the country anyway.

Interesting.

I’m not the only one questioning the dubious effectiveness of all this campaign advertising. As I was wondering these things I happened across this post over at Gin And Tacos which pretty much articulates my own thoughts on the subject. Ed writes:

Accordingly, asking whether money matters is essentially asking if advertising matters. Much like money, advertising has a threshold beyond which its marginal effects are indistinguishable from zero. There are different schools of thought on this issue, but my personal bias favors the argument that the threshold is very, very low. Advertising is good for name recognition and not much else. As you sit through the barrage of TV commercials for this year's candidates, ask yourself who is actually persuaded by any of this crap. Individuals' own preferences and partisan predispositions are an effective screen; in other words, any message from the opposite party is heavily discounted if not ignored altogether. If you're a Republican, you're going to tell yourself that anything in the Democrats' commercials is untrue and untrustworthy anyway.

Naturally, Republican ads are discounted by Democratic voters, and please show me the independent/undecided voter who is actually swayed by a campaign ad featuring the Scary Voiced Announcer Dude and Soaring Chorus when Candidate X appears on screen?

The only people campaign advertising makes a difference to is the people selling the air time. And it makes a huge difference to them. It will continue to make a difference to them until the candidates and campaigns themselves decide TV advertising isn’t effective. When that happens, the local and national networks will have a huge sad. Maybe as big of a sad as the one we’ll see by the RSCC, RCCC, DSCC, DCCC, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and every other group with their hand out seeking donations for ad buys that we could all do without.

Then and only then will this highway robbery come to an end and maybe we can have some sane political campaigns.

If We Can’t Get Real Healthcare Reform At Least We Can Get THIS

OMG this goes so far beyond “pet peeve” for me. I’ve literally felt my heart skip a bit when HEAD ON APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD comes screaming at me from the television set.

Watching the Titans game on Sunday it was so bad, Mr. Beale put the TV on mute during all of the commercials. You’d think that advertisers would realize that pumping up the volume on their ads is a surefire way to get people to turn them off and miss the message entirely. I guess you’d be wrong.

Anyway, apparently we can’t have decent healthcare reform or anything regulating carbon emissions, or a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. But maybe, just maybe, our glorious Democratic majority that we all worked so hard to achieve can do something about this:

Congress goes after those annoying TV ads that are WAY LOUDER THAN THE PROGRAMS

December 14, 2009 |  4:44 pm

You know how sometimes those folks on TV -- even on our favorite Sunday political talk shows -- are conversing so softly that you turn up the volume a little. And then forget about it.

Until the commercial comes on and it's, WHOA! SO MUCH LOUDER THAN THE SHOWS?

So you scramble for the remote, fiddle with the volume button and curse the product being advertised, ranting about how these stupid things should be illegal.

Even though, come to think of it, there's a serious question about inviting the feds in to control television volume in individual homes.

Apparently, this loud volume has also struck the ears of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. He's a Democrat, of course. From Rhode Island.

He's now introduced legislation called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Migration Act of 2009 -- the unnecessary "M" word obviously being thrown in to construct the cutesy acronym, CALM. Feels better already, right?

The bill proposes that the Federal Communications Commission regulate commercials, mandating that the sales pitches must remain at the same decibel level as the show that precedes them. Rep. Anna Eshoo, of Menlo Park, another Democrat, has introduced companion legislation in the House.

Actually, I thought we already had a regulation about this. Guess not.

Trust me, I'd much rather have healthcare reform, and our troops home for Christmas, and some kind of action on climate change, and a whole mess of other stuff. But clearly our Democrats in Congress are completely unable to do anything major so I would like to offer my wholehearted support for CALM.

Try not to fuck this one up too, okay?

Bet She Won’t Try THAT Again

Newscoma had a hilarious post up Saturday about “cannibalistic advertising.” You know, those cute food mascots like the scrappy Frosted Mini-Wheats (including "Mr. Mini Wheat”), who brag about how they provide such a nutritious breakfast for their human, right before he chomps them to bits and washes them down with milk.

Just, ewww. Never understood why advertising agencies thought putting a human face on food was a good idea. Kind of flies in the face of tens of thousands of years of human taboos, guys.

Anyway, with that in mind I happened across this hilarious LSD propaganda film. What does this have to do with cannibalistic advertising? Just watch, you’ll see:



With that in mind, the holiday is over and I’m retreating back into my hole. Hope to be finished with my project in a couple weeks.

Campaign 4-Ever

You cannot convince me that this is in the nation’s best interests:

Interest groups on all sides of the debate have spent more than $57 million on television advertisements in six months, most of it in the last 45 days, said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks television advertisements.

“It’s the most we’ve seen this quick,” Mr. Tracey said. “If it goes on all year, we’re looking at one of the biggest public policy ad wars ever.”

I’ve long suspected that our media willfully keeps the American public ignorant and at each others’ throats to the point where a sector of the population would believe in outlandish ideas like government “death panels.” Why? For the express purpose of creating an ad war. Sounds crazy, I know, but when I survey the landscape to see who is profiting right now, all I come up with is alphabet soup: CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS.

Think about it: the networks get rich off the election cash cow that arrives every two years. But how to rescue the bottom line in off years? Of course in 2007, we had our earliest presidential primary season ever. Remember this?

As such, Tracey predicts that there could be as much as $600 million in broadcast political ad spending this year. While that pales in comparison to last year's record $2.3 billion in political commercials, fueled by the bitter mid-term elections, Tracey said ad spending in 2007 could be the highest ever for an odd-numbered year.

2008 we were in full campaign mode. 2009 could have been a wash, but it looks like the networks’ bacon has been saved by healthcare reform. Next year we will have the mid-term elections, and then the Republican presidential primary.

Of course, this sounds way too “tin-foil hattish” for my liking. But anyone wondering why our news media specializes in lies and distortions might also keep in mind all the public policy groups advertising to “correct the record”:

Supporters of Mr. Obama’s plan to overhaul the system have outspent opponents, with $24 million worth of advertising, compared with $9 million from opponents. An additional $24 million has been broadly spent in support of overhauling the system without backing a specific plan.

Sound crazy? No crazier than a government-sponsored “death panel” pulling the plug on your grandma.

This Is Ridiculous

Building on this morning's post about the California budget crisis, Arnold should be so proud of this:

Tom Farber gives a lot of tests. He's a calculus teacher, after all.

So when administrators at Rancho Bernardo, his suburban San Diego high school, announced the district was cutting spending on supplies by nearly a third, Farber had a problem. At 3 cents a page, his tests would cost more than $500 a year. His copying budget: $316. But he wanted to give students enough practice for the big tests they'll face in the spring, such as the Advanced Placement exam.

"Tough times call for tough actions," he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final.

Ads on test papers because the school district cut the supplies budget? This is a Libertarian’s wet dream. Free hand of the market! Problem solved! After all, in modern society everything is a commodity and everyone is a potential buyer! Everywhere a sales pitch, even in high school math class. Got to get that consumer messaging in early.

I think I'm going to be sick.

Farber says he was overwhelmed with requests from prospective advertisers. I’m not surprised. Young people today are an exceptionally ripe market for advertisers. They have few expenses and a lot of disposable income, and they’re easily suckered into buying a lot of crap they don’t need. And you don't get a more captive audience than a high school kid showing up to take the calculus final.

If this doesn’t ring some alarm bells, I don’t know what will. Says Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert:

"The advertisers are paying for something, and it's access to kids," he says.

Exactly. I railed against advertising to children and youth well over a year ago when I was nauseated by the constant barrage of sales pitches at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.

Free enterprise has its place. I just wish it would remember to stay in it.

Let’s NOT Pump Up The Jam

I’m liking this idea a whole lot:

Have you ever noticed how some TV commercials sound louder than the programs you are watching? U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-California, 14th) has noticed, says it’s done on purpose, finds it annoying and has introduced a bill to make it stop.

Rep. Eshoo’s Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM, would order the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create and enforce federal regulations requiring that television advertisements not be excessively noisy.

I can’t tell you how many times Mr. Beale and I have frantically searched the sofa cushions and piles of newspaper on the coffee table looking for the remote control because “HEAD ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!” is blaring at double the volume of whatever program we were watching. It’s annoying, infuriating and, sometimes, depending on the advertisement, frightening.

Actually, I thought we already had one of these laws. I kinda remembered a story going back to the ‘70s about a senior citizen who suffered a heart attack when she was scared out of her wits by a really loud advertisement. The FCC reacted by telling TV stations that advertisements couldn’t be louder than television programming. But maybe I’m making that up. Maybe it was just an urban legend.

Anyway, I know I’m not the only one annoyed by overly-loud advertisements; there’s even an online campaign.

I really despise the whole advertising/marketing industry. On NPR today I heard how they’re using neuroscience to rate ads’ effectiveness. “It studies brain activity to learn what TV audiences like,” says reporter Kim Masters.

Pssst! You know what TV audiences like? No commercials!

Here’s another thought: you can try all of the fancy neuroscience/viral/stealth marketing/hi-tech whizbang techniques you want but nothing beats old fashioned creativity for getting your message across.

Slave 2U

NO.

Just, no:

Looking to strike a blow against the proliferation of digital video recorders, the ABC network, its affiliated broadcast stations, and Cox Communications’ cable systems are establishing an on-demand video service that would allow viewers to watch ABC shows like “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” any time they choose.

The catch: It uses a new technology that disables the viewers’ ability to fast-forward through commercials.

Am I stuck in a Pepé Le Pew cartoon, or what? Just when consumers figure out a way around those annoying TV commercials that we all hate to watch, corporate America finds another way to FORCE us to watch their sales pitch anyway.

STOP IT. Just, quit it. We don’t want to watch your ads, alright? You’re pissing me off here.

I hate being marketed to. I hate it. I’ve written about this before, notably here and here. I can’t tell you how offensive, intrusive, dehumanizing and manipulative I find this whole “you WILL WATCH” crap from corporate America.

Listen up, Corporate America: quit treating me like a giant, throbbing wallet. I know all you want is my money but geez, could you at least pretend we consumers are, you know, people?

Here’s what you people fail to understand: I want to buy your product. I’m a consumer. I live in America. That means I consume A LOT. It’s the American way, it’s how we show our patriotism, right? But the over-aggressive way you shove your products at me is a huge turnoff. I’m this close to going all lefty-commie-DFH and getting all anti-consumer on y’all's ass.

Keep this Advertising Nazi crap up and I will. Just you wait.

Corporaquarium

I am cranky. I just spent my Saturday at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. It wasn’t a good time.

This is what the world looks like in the global economy. You’re assaulted by corporate logos everywhere you look; even the aquarium’s mascot is a bright-orange Nemo rip-off named--get this--”Deepo.”

Deepo? As in Home Depot, perhaps? Why yes, the Atlanta-based Home Depot, known for its orange logo, does happen to be a major sponsor of the new facility. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

In fact, much of Atlanta is one giant sales pitch. The wonderful MARTA, which transported us with ease and comfort from Buckhead to downtown, is filled with advertisements: television screens inside the cars blare ads, while at the station you are greeted with LED displays, billboards and floor mats hawking everything from new DVD releases to eyecare.

I don’t mean to pick on Atlanta, which is a lovely city in many respects. I’ve traveled enough New York subways to know that Atlanta isn’t the first city to view transit riders as a captive audience. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I’m sick of being marketed to. I’m tired of being viewed as a giant, throbbing wallet of cash everywhere I go by some “big brother”-like force that wants to know everything about me so it can separate me from my savings. It’s the ultimate dehumanizing experience for the consumer age. We haven’t been names in a long time, now the only number we represent is what’s in our bank accounts. And now they want our kids.

Seeing corporate logos so shamelessly displayed at a family destination like the Georgia Aquarium appalled me. These weren’t small “brought to you by” plaques; in many cases the corporate sponsor’s name was more prominent than that of the attraction.

This is wrong for a lot of reasons. Museums, zoos and aquariums are not entertainment venues, they are educational opportunities. They serve a community function, and with that should come a civic responsibility to not treat impressionable young kids like market sectors.

Three years ago the American Psychological Assn. called for stricter regulations protecting children from advertising. I really don’t see the difference between a TV ad for Lucky Charms featuring a cute leprechaun and Home Depot’s Deepo the orange fish.

Look, I’m glad that corporate America is supporting a worthwhile effort like the Georgia Aquarium, and they deserve to be acknowledged for this contribution to the betterment of society. But do they have to turn these good works into a screaming sales pitch that’s rammed down our throats at every turn? Did UPS really need to advertise how it transports animal exhibits to the aquarium in a multi-panel advertise---oops, I mean educational display as I left the beluga whale exhibit? If this is what brown can do for me, I don’t want it.

We’re all just little fish here, but it’s high time we stood up to this big fish and told it to quit pushing us around.