This has not been a good month for advertising.
In the past two weeks or so, the advertising folks for Hyundai somehow managed to
convince someone that using a disturbingly realistic depiction of suicide was
the perfect way to sling new cars. General Motors had to pull an ad after people
realized the lyrics to an old song from the 1930’s used in the spot were raciallyinsensitive to Asians. And, finally, Pepsi had to pull an ad that somehow
manages to make fun of both black people and domestic violence all in less than a minute. All in all, not
a great time to be on Madison Avenue.
Or, of course, it is. The old adage, “bad publicity is still
publicity,” still holds true. As is usual in these sorts of situations, Hyundai
claims that the ad wasn’t approved by them and was just created as a potential ad
(or some such nonsense), ignoring the fact that pretty much everyone was able to, you know,
see it. A similar situation occurred by Ford, whose Indian subdivision a few
months ago launched a print campaign that made fun of celebrities and public figures by showing cartoons of them bound and gagged in the back of their vehicle (it’s so much roomier, you see.) Given the state of India nowadays, even casual
and incidental mentions of sexual assault probably isn’t the best idea, and
trying to shield yourself from the allegedly satiric celebrity angle probably
isn’t going to work. Ford, of course, claimed they didn’t “approve” it at HQ;
it was just that pesky Indian division that they still somehow manage to take huge amounts of profits from. Ad agencies are very good at somehow allowing
their work to be seen by the public and then claiming they weren’t responsible
for it if the whole thing turns sour.
The other two examples given above, for General Motors and
Pepsi, are at least a little bit more justifiable. The GM spot was just sloppy;
it was an older tune that I’m sure everyone assumed was “safe” without actually
listening to the lyrics. The Mountain Dew ad was created by Tyler the Creator
and was also a continuation of a series of ads that make more sense in context
(well, relatively speaking), but still, on its own, was pretty obnoxious. In
both cases it seems like someone not involved in the ad needed to step back,
look at the whole picture, and yell “Stop!”
This, of course, seems to be happening more and more often.
A lot of it has been blamed on the “new” media landscape: ads need to be made
in record time and have to be splashed all over social media, so the chance of
misjudgment is significantly higher than normal. And, of course, trying to
cater to the young Facebook-obsessed market means being edgier, which involves
a lot of risks on its own.
But I think it’s more than that. Quite frankly, advertising
sucks in pretty much every format. Not that advertising has ever had
this wonderful Golden Age of style and substance; ads have always been a pretty
shallow business with a minimal shelf life. Most advertising is insipid and
sad; the whole point is 1) to convince people to buy your product, not to make
art, and 2) to lower everything to the lowest denominator to capture the most people to get the most out of your money. It makes sense. And, sure, times have changed; ads can be targeted in an almost
creepily accurate manner. But the large money and large campaign are still
about reaching the most number of people and tell them to buy your shitty
product.
I realize it’s anecdotal, of course, but advertising is
pretty rough across the board nowadays. Any time I watch live television—which is
very rare in today’s age of DVRs and Netflix—the commercials just seem to be
actively awful. Not necessarily boring or ineffective, but everyone is trying so
hard to be “edgy” it is almost embarrassing, almost like Grandpa trying to rap or a
dog sitting at the dinner table holding a knife and fork and licking his chops.
(OK, I would pay to see both of those.) I have seen some ads lately that have actively wanted me to avoid their product.*
I am aware of the collapse of advertising; razor-thin
margins for internet advertising, on-demand viewing, and the absolute collapse
of print media have made getting eyeballs to ads the new white whale. And I’m
fully aware that the days of commercial-free DVRs are numbered; I fully expect product placement to skyrocket and the bottom half of my TV screen devoted solely to a sliding crawl of car insurance mascots and greasy slogans for Burger King.. Still, the
quality of advertising seems to have made a drastic collapse, and I’m
not sure where the industry goes from here. My suspicion is nowhere good.
The Pledge: The modern advertising agency is a garbage dumpster filled with poorly executed mediocrity. Stop trying to use rap artists I’ve never heard
of to sell me expensive cars I could never afford.
*In the advertising industry, this is generally seen to be a indicator of ineffective advertising.
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