Season to buy

This is a rant about advertising. I love advertising. I love it as a business almost as much as I love movies or books. I mean, once you get past the fact they ads are entirely self serving and contribute to culture in the worst way possible…once you get past that, you have to admis that they as much a potential outlet for creativity as any other medium! And it’s b3ecasue of this that I actually go out of my way to reward great advertising by buying their products, while at the same time avoid products that have horrible ads. Yes that’s me, I’m a consumer.

Thinking caps on:
So first up is a stupid radio ad I keep hearing for a mortgage company that apparently is the first ever not to charge a closing fee. The guy not only tells us that he and the bank are going to make tons of money on interest over the life of the loan, which is why he doesn’t need to charge the ‘extra’ fee, but he than says that this is the ‘biggest no-brainer in the history of Earth.’ And that’s the part that gets me. Forget that he is admitting to robbing us blind on interest…the biggest no-brainer in the HISTORY of Earth? Not the history mortgages, or the history of finance, or even in the history of humanity – No, the history of Earth, which has existed for over 4500 million years!
That got me thinking…what IS the biggest no-brainer in the history of Earth? Right away thought of ‘don’t but your hand in the fire,’ figuring that any of the various stages of man over the millennium would have learned that one pretty quickly as a general rule. Sure individuals violate that all the time, but as a group, humanoids pretty much understand the value of that one. But wait, maybe that’s not such a no-brainer, maybe that’s one you have to experience and therefore use your brain to learn the lesson for the future. So what then would require no intellect or experience to deduce? And for that matter, shouldn’t we branch beyond the various stages of mankind? Shouldn’t we include any type of animal over the years?
It was that sort of thinking that lead me to ‘don’t go over that cliff’ and variations of. Instinct, rather than thought, keeps just about every species from hurling itself off deep chasms. In fast perception studies have been done of various animals and babies with visual cliffs that show that creatures avoid falling when possible. Oh, forget the lemmings, people, there’s an exception to everything!
However, when I presented this discussion to a friend recently, he immediately went to ‘food in mouth’ and the biggest no-brainer in the history of Earth, and that’s hard to argue with. First of all it not only applies to species that live under water or can fly that were perhaps not included in my cliff option. Second, unlike the cliff which requires happening across a cliff during ones travels, it is essential to the survival of any creature and therefore constantly applied! Finally, if the mouth part is removed and it’s simplified to something like ‘consume’ then it applies to ALL living things that grow and reproduce, brain or no brain!
‘Crap’ is the only thing I can think of that has that sort of global appeal.

Not musically inclined:
Why is it all of a sudden the perception that nobody knows the words to the songs they listen too? Most recently this is portrayed in an ad for a portable digital music device where two guys can’t figure out the words to “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash, but it’s been used many times before (some add with Mr. T comes to mind)! Stop the cat box!? What kind freakin’ idiot would conclude that? Especially after having to search for the song BY TITLE in order to download it! This representation of America’s music listeners just has to be put to rest.

WOPR vs. Little Mac
I’m not going to partake in the Mac vs. PC argument. I’ve used both, and at this point they are pretty much equal and differ more in style than in function. I am going to say that the recent Mac/PC ads that Mac has put out are ridiculous and recent rumors are that they have started to backfire, which I’m thrilled about.
You all know the ones I’m talking about, with the two guys – Mac, the young Gen-Y hipster and the PC the nerdy cubicle knowledge-worker?
Let’s recap the series of ads. First they tell us that Macs are good for things like photo’s and movies while PC’s are good for business stuff and programming. Then they tell us that Macs can make web pages about vacations but PCs can only do things like black and white pie charts. In one they imply that only Macs can communicate with things like digital cameras and other devices. Oh, and my favorite – PC’s come in to many boxes!
For a company that has constantly struggled with legitimacy in the computing world, I can’t believe that the customer base they want is the one that would buy this campaign! A recent ad has the two exchanging gifts where the Mac has made a picture scrap book and the PC is into programming guides. “We make happy pictures and all you do is useful stuff’ just doesn’t seem like the message they should be sending.
The real kicker is that another recent ad has the PC stating that he just got bought by a family has gotten to do nothing but pictures and movies and email and web blogs! The Mac feels sorry for him because PC seems to not enjoy it but they are ADMITTING that it can do it!
I have heard that they might be pulling the ads since consumers are starting to sympathize with the PC character more than the Mac…justice, I say!

The good stuff
Finally I get the one I just love.
I’ve never been a fan of Geico ads. I have specifically avoided Geico, no matter how much they claim I can save, because I just can’t bring myself to legitimize their ad campaign. When they initially began their ‘so easy, a caveman can do it’ ads I was not impressed. But, their recent execution of the concept has been hilarious.
For those who don’t remember, the idea started with an ad in which they are filming an ad. The actor say the line and the camera pans so that you see a caveman in the production crew getting offended and causing a scene. The next round of ads showed studio execs trying to apologize by buying a fancy dinner and talking sweet, while one caveman orders, clearly, the most expensive thing on the menu, and the other states that he can’t eat in disgust. Funny, but not great. There was another with a couple of caveman roommates complaining to the TV while watching an ad, and now they have one guy in therapy who catches the shrink painted in the corner with an off the cuff comment.
The good stuff really is in two recent ads. The first shows the caveman, like any other traveler, standing on a moving sidewalk in an airport – iPod, backpack, tickets in hand, etc. With muzak playing in the background, he rolls past a billboard of the Geico campaign showing a stereotypical caveman (skins and club) sitting at a computer. At first he missed it then backs up, looks at it, and throws his arms up in disgust. It’s the reaction that’s so good. he throws this mini tantrum hoping that someone is there to see him, but not so big that he looks like he’s trying to get noticed. You know what I mean – it’s to himself but also to anyone he might be able to get to notice him…but no one is around. It’s the perfect reaction!
The other simulates some daily news opinion story. The moderator says something about how the caveman must admit that historically they have struggle to adapt. The caveman responds sarcastically “right, walking upright, discovering fire, inventing the wheel, laying the foundation for all mankind – sorry we couldn’t get that to you sooner!” not only is that good, but then moderator goes to the counter-point guest who says “looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of rock!” – obviously going for the sound bite, rather than substance. Just like the airport, it’s the caveman’s reaction that I think is great as he rolls his eyes and collapses in his chair disgusted that he can’t get taken seriously! Priceless acting…even for a caveman! And I won’t even get into the frightening reality of the type of interviews they are spoofing.

Airport
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZrjr4A-ASQ
Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVVSmnnqfvc

USS Alden Avenue

So one weekend my brother Jesse, our friend Adam, and I are hanging out at the house playing with the G.I. Joes and Star Wars figures. My dad decides that it’s a perfect weekend to take on one of the major projects he’s been plotting around the house. No…not one of ‘those’ tasks that most men think of doing like fixing the leaky shower, or painting a room – my father didn’t do those things; he paid people to do those things. The chore I’m referring to is the construction of an aircraft carrier. Yes aircraft carrier. For the action figures! Ha, no, not a real one you silly!
See, a few months earlier Hasbro released their newest monstrosity-in-plastic: the G.I. Joe Aircraft Carrier play set. To most kids, including my brother and me, this was the holy grail of G.I. Joe toys! It came with a full deck, command tower with flight center and navigation room. Radar dishes, elevators, and a plethora of other features that every 3.5 inch Joe figure needed to win the war against Cobra! To my father it came with all sorts of cool stuff like a big flat sheet of plastic as a deck, and a square box of plastic as a tower, and a few more pieces of plastic which moved a couple of inches to simulate various things.
That tone that you sense is sarcasm. In reality, to my father it was a triple-digit dollar slab of plastic. He had these funny rules about which toys were cool and worth buying and which were not. The Cobra Ninja was cool enough that all three of us needed one – me, Jesse, and my father. The Star Wars snow speeder was cool enough, but the twin-pod cloud car was not and I still don’t know why.
Back to the story. So he wasn’t going to buy it for us, but since our friend Matt Harper had one, he didn’t want us to be the only kids on the block with out our own aircraft carrier! His solution was to build us one using all of the cardboard prowess he had inherited from his father, and which I have since inherited from him (Jesse inherited the spelling gene, which is also quite useful). Yes, he was going to build us one in the basement out of the stacks of cardboard sheets that had been saved over the years from pressed shirts!
I don’t recall what time the construction began, but it took several hours to collect the materials, make measurements, and draw schematics. Several more hours of marking and cutting the great slabs of steel (cardboard). Sweat and blood were poured into the project as the basement turned into a navy yard at Newport News. Hammers clanged, rivets popped, and sparks flew from white-hot welders. Also a lot of tape, glue, and x-acto blades were used.
Late into the day the hull was finally laid – a 6 foot long teardrop of cardboard with expertly reinforced, crisscrossing bulkheads to hold the shape and support the deck that would lie atop it. I remember my father standing triumphantly over it, as proud as Henry Kaiser must have been of his liberty ships. This was to be his greatest gift to his children who were clearly deserving and waiting patiently and alertly to assist in the construction in anyway possible…
It was then that he must have asked me to hand him something, or look at something, or DO something, anything…and it was then that he realized that I, Jesse, and Adam had wandered from the project, as young boys with short attention spans are prone to do. I mean we were right there! But not there, too. So when he asked and I didn’t respond, and he asked again, and I still didn’t respond, and he may even have asked a third, fourth, or fifth time (I really don’t know!)…something inside him…snapped.
Yes snapped. As sometimes happed within my father. Like when you didn’t tell him you had a paper due Monday until Sunday night. Or like when you – what was it you didn’t used to do, Jesse, that made him pull your hair? Like that…
Now how do I explain what happened next? When I study historic events, like the Roman destruction of Carthage in which each stone of each building was crushed to dust so that Carthage could never rise again, or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, where for miles every person and structure were vaporized to black carbon ash…I can’t help but think of the image of my father and that aircraft carrier. Godzilla haphazardly tramping through a small city knocking over a few building here and there doesn’t even come close, but if Godzilla took giant strides and specifically crushed every building, house, sculpture, fountain, and monument on the entire island of Manhattan while screaming a deafening sound, shooting fire from his eyes, and smoke from his nostrils, than that would be like my father trampling back and fourth over the cardboard superstructure until each piece had been pulverized back into the earth from whence it came.
There are still nights were Jesse wakes up in the dark from nightmares of being taped and glued into a cardboard coffin and Adam shakes and sweats at the sight of a boat. As for me…I try to stay away from pressed shirts.