Angry Ads

Since our arrival in Scotland, we’ve been introduced to a whole new suite of advertising, particularly through the miracle of digital TV. Three such ads, all of which are shown with hateful regularity, have been driving me absolutely nuts. They are:

Covonia Nose and Throat Morning

Reason For Suckage: Shows a black woman sick in bed, her hair in a natural afro state. After taking the medicine, however – surprise! Her hair has been straightened and coiffed to denote that she is now both healthy and professional. Oh, and she also meets western standards of physical attractiveness, as denoted by her white, male neighbour blowing her a kiss from his bath. Verdict: Racefail.

Kingsmill 50/50 Bread

Reason For Suckage: Dad comes downstairs for breakfast, where mum, already perfectly made up, is doing the ironing in the kitchen while the kids eat, because we have apparently been transported to the 1950s. Alas! Dad’s shirt is creased and he’s in a hurry, so mum offers to iron it – but because Kingsmill bread is so delicious, dad decides he’s got enough time to sit down to eat the toast his wife had made for herself. Both daughters giggle, and mum, smirking, takes her revenge by ironing a huge burn into the back of her husband’s white shirt, which he, oblivious, wears to work. Yes. Because passive-aggressive housewife rage at the selfishness of her breadwinner (HAH!) spouse is OH SO FUNNY. Verdict: erafail, and also feminismfail.

Feminax Express

Reason For Suckage: Boyfriend and girlfriend are watching TV on the couch. Boyfriend laughs at the show; cut to girlfriend scowling. Boyfriend inspects his fingernails; girlfriend’s scowl deepens. Then, because enjoying the show and staring at his hands apparently constitute a hanging offence – or, you know, ANY KIND OF PROVOCATION AT ALL – girlfriend pulls a lever on the lounge that catapults the screaming boyfriend out the window and into the wild blue yonder. As girlfriend stretches out, smiling, across the whole length of the lounge, the female voice over chortles: “If only getting rid of all pains could be as fast as Feminax Express!” Who says that PMS turns women into irrational bitches? Answer: advertising! And what’s more, girls, we should all be able to laugh about our crazy together! Verdict: feminismfail.

GAH. I mean, SERIOUSLY. Who are the braindead ad execs who greenlight this bullshit, and where do I queue for the privilege of kicking them in the face?

In Which Some Ranting Occurs

Is there anything sadder than a government add campaign self-consciously endeavouring to relate to Teh Young Peoples? I mean, seriously – how stupid do these people think teenagers are? I don’t care how it was back in the Good Old Days Of Yore, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and John Howard was still the lifeblood of the Young Liberals, because nowadays, people don’t look upon advertising as a natural Goddamm phenomenon. It’s not like the weather. It doesn’t just exist in some pristine, impartial state. This is not the 1950s. We know where advertising comes from, and what it is for. The fact that the government is endeavouring to promote law rather than a product grants them a unique legitimacy, especially as the intended consequence here is to save lives. But these ads, right here? They are the televised equivalent of entering a valid argument in full possession of the relevant moral highground, and then proceding to answer every statement with inane schoolyard insults. The government is trying to relate to young people, but instead, it is insulting their intelligence.

A small interlude, by way of comparison. Consider the following recent ad, wherein ANZ has created the (admittedly amusing) strawman of Barbara, a bank manager who lives in Bank World, and who is described as being the diametric opposite of an ANZ employee. I laugh when I watch this ad, because I have encountered people like Barbara in my travels, but I am not fooled into thinking that ANZ’s recognition of the stereotype equates to their having eradicated it. The point being, I am meant to find Barbara repulsive, because the ad works on the assumption that I, its intended audience, am not a Barbara myself. Furthermore, I do not want to be Barbara; I am not friends with a Barbara; I should, in fact, have nothing to do with her (wait for it) barbarous kind, and therefore – it is hoped – the humour and disgust I feel when looking at Barbara will lull me into accepting the premise of the ad, which is that ANZ is home to bunnies and light and sweetness, while all other banks are slavering, scabrous bastions of cruelty and disease. Or, like, not.

But.

The government, in its infinite wisdom, has elected to mock emos and redheads as part of its campaign. Question from the gallery: are there emos and redheads among the teenage population? Ding ding ding, that’s an affirmative, Captain! And are they friends and associates of  other teenagers who, although neither emo nor redheaded themselves, are likely to be outraged on their behalf? Double jackpot! And now, for the winner: assuming the remaining population of phone-wielding teenage drivers who like to mouth off their hatred of emos and redheads find these ads funny, what are the chances that their mirth will translate into careful driving practices, rather than – as seems infinitely more likely – serving as justification for their bigoted trashtalking? Do I hear cries of slim to none from the audience? Hallelujah! Thanks for playing another tedious round of Yet More Proof The Government Is Run By Crazy People With Little Or No Grasp On Reality And The Social Intelligence Of A Concussed Trout! I mean, Sweet Zombie Jesus!

Some days, I hate everything.

Look, dudes-in-government: there’s no shame in being so hopelessly out of touch as to qualify you as having only four working senses. Well, tell a lie – maybe there’s a little shame, but that’s only because you can’t bear to admit it. You like the idea of being in touch, because you’ve made a career out of popularity, and deep down in the tiny, scum-encrusted carapace of your stunted souls, you can’t bear to think that there’s a demographic alive you might not be able to sway, should you desire it – but you are not in touch. And most of the time, we, the Thinking People Under Thirty, don’t particularly care, because it’s what we expect. But when you do something like this, it makes us sit up and take notice, and not in a good way. Suddenly, we smell the lies on you, the way dogs smell fear; we curl our lips and remember why we are so fucking disinclined, by and large, to take your advice in the first place. You, with your forced joviality and condescention, you make yourselves resemble a set of creatures we have no wish to become; but inevitably, we will grow up, and when that happens, we do not wish to be scrambling for the approval of our juniors, as you so clearly are, but earning it through a demonstration of the idea that maybe, just maybe, our older selves are something worth imitating.

Today, you failed at that. You failed hard.

Try and learn from it.

Points Of Clarification

1. Why does Blogger’s word verification function, despite being a self-proclaimed word verification fuction, not use actual words? Because last time I looked in a dictionary (which, if anyone’s interested, was earlier today, when my husband challenged my use of the word trinary, as in a trinary star system, saying it should be ternary, when in fact they’re synonyms, and anyway trinary sounds better), neither mandesh nor gyzate were present, despite their sounding like reasonable descriptions of the kind of wound left by aggressive dentures and a flegeling newspaper, respectively. Tres Douglas Adams. Now there’s a man who would’ve appreciated the word trinary, Zarquon bless him!

2. What, exactly, does ‘optioning’ mean, as per the sentence: Peter Jackson has optioned Naomi Novik”s Temeraire books? Because, three years old though this news may be, it was mentioned again in this week’s A2 section of the Age, in a demi-review of the latest volume, Victory of Eagles. (Which I haven’t read yet. So anyone who has: shut up.) Point being, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing Hollywood types say when expressing their opinion outside the holy sanction of a studio greenlight. Like rogue priests preaching radical doctrine, any director, producer or studio executive who enjoys a work of adaptable fiction is ultimately subject to a higher authority, their statements reported through ever-murkening channels until men in red capes with an excess of expensive jewelery summon them to the Holy See (Las Angeles) and there demand a reckoning. Bastards.

3. Jesus toast? Good gravy, world, I thought we were past this. The bread in question looks more like a lopsided scrotum than the son of God, and even when you factory in its edibility, that’s still not saying much. The fact that someone was willing to trade for, and I quote, “a sack of onions that looks like Madonna” (oh, New Idea, where is thy sting?) should be a dead giveaway. Personally, I’d  take the twenty bucks, have done with it and run cackling into the night. But that’s just me.

4. The new Mother energy drink ads. Am I the only one, or is there something bizarrely post-modern about the idea of an energy drink manufacturer making a product which, only belatedly and thanks to complaints, did they realise tasted like complete arse, prompting them to make  a new version, which they then marketed with a series of quasi-violent ads, which specifically mentioned the previous complaints, which they then subsequently retracted and redrew with stick figures on the basis of yet more complaints? And, yes, that was a hideously long sentence, but just think of it: an energy drink that apologises for sucking while trying to sell itself to a demographic which, according to the same marketeers who produced a bad product in the first place, respond best to violence and aggro? Send for a philosopher. (Or, you know, maybe someone at Mother could try the thing before selling it. Just an idea.)

Here endeth the lesson.

Better Red Than…?

I’m thoroughly fed up with the deluge of patriotic, nationalistic advertising during the Olympics coverage. Top offenders include Telstra, with their motifs of manufacturedly-diverse Australians clustered around mobile phones to watch the Games; Qantas, with their children’s choir singing in the shape of a kangaroo about which island continent they call home; and Panasonic, who have shamelessly co-opted almost the entire swim team in order to sell more cameras. The Commonwealth Bank also rates a mention, not so much due to patriotism, but because their bizarre series of forcedly-post-modern, let’s-mock-American-marketeers-while-simultaneously-selling-home-loans commercials are currently broadcast on Channel 7 at the rate of approximately ten to the half hour.

When it comes to bafflement, however, Red Rooster takes the cake. Their most recent campaign slogan, ‘it’s gotta be red’, has been frotting around the airwaves for most of 2008, but has been quixotically altered in honour of the Olympics.  ‘Notice how well red goes with China?’ their ads ask – and for the life of me, I cannot tell whether irony is intended, or if the fact that red is traditionally synonymous with communism has managed to completely escape the marketing gurus of a giant American – that is to say, capitalist – corporation. Surely, a part of me thinks, this can’t be the case. Someone, somewhere must have pointed out that China’s flag is red for a reason. But if that be so, then the irony is unintended, and therefore equally perturbing in its implications: that a capitalist company has, on the one hand, publicly commented on how well communism suits China; and on the other, is now using this fact to sell chicken.

Truly, the mind boggles.

The Gruen Transfer

I look forward to Wednesday night on the ABC – in fact, it’s the only night I plan on watching actual broadcast content. The Young Inventors, Spicks and Specks, The IT Crowd and The Armstrong and Miller Show are all great fun, and given the premise of going backstage with advertising experts, The Gruen Transfer seemed like a promising addition to the line-up.

In hindsight, Will Anderson should have set alarm bells ringing. As much as I loved The Glass House, Dave Hughes and a series of witty guests carried that show, because Young Master Billy, as his abysmal performance at this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival made apparent, is ratshit without an autocue and some interesting sidekicks.

Which leads us to the advertising representatives who, it seems, will make up the weekly panel. It’s worth noting the apparent effort at diversity in their ranks: Dee, the sole woman, comes off as creative-by-nature, cynical-by-necessity, and easily the most intelligent and well-adjusted participant. Granted, however, this is not tricky when compared to her fellow marketeers. Russell has the self-contradicting, overly-enthusiastic sheen of a man suddenly forced to rationalise ethical issues he hasn’t actually thought about. Todd appeared genuinely interested in the psychology and studies behind why advertising works, but took a credibility hit from being paired with Dan, the vile, sleazy epitome of corporate selling, whose cringeworthy humour left the audience wincing and Will Anderson with a glazed, almost manic desperation to change topic.

The humour of The Gruen Transfer  was hard to pinpoint: watching advertising high-flyers hold forth on how to market beer (or, at one point, whale meat) held an awful fascination, because none of the panel seemed to realise that their willingness to do so, rather than any jokes they might make, was what people had shown up to laugh at. Anderson himself was uncertain of which side to take, alternately egging on the advertisers and asking sharp questions of them. But this only achieved awkwardness: laughing with the panel alienated the audience, while laughing at them provoked unease. Having tuned in to watch marketing practices exposed as immoral wank and their practitioners called scum, I maintain the latter tactic is the most viable means of success, but it’s undoubtably difficult to make four professionals show up for a weekly ridiculing of their chosen industry.

Ultimately, The Gruen Transfer seems like an insupportable concept. As long as it remains unable to strike a working balance between self-pity, mockery and flagellation, it will act as a discomforting metaphor for society’s relationship with advertising: hate-love, with lashings of smug immorality, ignorance and guilt.