About 20 years ago, when I was a kid, my dad told me something I’ve never forgotten, even if I didn’t fully understand it at the time. He said, “Son, the world doesn’t always reward the talented. But it always rewards the outspoken.
I’ve found this to be true, generally, but in advertising, specifically. It goes some way to explaining the obsessive compulsive nature of the industry; its need to always manage to say something, even when it doesn’t have that much to say.
So what’s the problem with that? Why is too much advertising a bad thing?
Twelve years ago, The Beautiful South sang this prescient lyric: “The world won’t end in darkness/ It’ll end in family fun/ With Coca Cola clouds/ Behind a Big Mac sun.
(Incidentally, the best ever song about advertising that you’ve never heard of is “Too Much Information by Duran Duran. The title of this week’s column is lifted from it.)
The message from the Beautiful South was clear: advertising and commercialism are ruining everything, and if you don’t watch out, they’re going to eat you up.
I have to admit: being eaten by advertising doesn’t really register on any of my top-things-to-be-scared-of list.
What does? Here’s a sampler: Sharks, nuclear war, censorship, mad cow disease, ostriches, political correctness, Egyptian mothers, Japanese children, turned-out belly buttons, people with small hands, short girls in cowboy boots, albinos, baldness, ventriloquist dummies, monogamy, street mimes, clowns, prison shower scenes, Vietnam vets, revolving doors and breaking open an egg and having a dead chick fall out.
Clearly, I have my issues. But I also have an issue with the sheer bombardment of advertising we’re subjected to. The effects of which range from the ridiculous to the plain disturbing. Such as: My favorite show that doesn’t require the use of my brain (because I hardly ever understand the plot) is the original “Law & Order.
Puncturing the flow of this fine hour-long broadcast are four ad breaks, each about four minutes long.
Sixteen minutes of my life I’m never getting back. By the end of the episode, not only do I not care whodunit, I can barely remember what it is they were supposed to have done. Ridiculous.
Here’s another example: Repetitive ads that appear endlessly on every channel in every timeslot announcing inconsequential price cuts on products I don’t care about.
While I admit that a 25 percent savings on a chicken sub sandwich does add up to a not-to-be-sneezed at 90 pounds a year, I am left in no doubt that I’ll be spending 10 times that amount in therapy, trying to erase their stupid jingle from my brain. Ridiculous.
Another one 3ashan il 7abayib (an Egyptian expression that means “for the sake of the loved ones ).
When Google was first “concocted, they didn’t know how to make money out of it. Eventually, they devised the model that rules most internet ads today: customizing the banner ads that appear on the page, to whatever subject you were searching for. That in itself is not the problem.
The problem is that I also have a Google email account, and that’s customized too. So whenever I send a PRIVATE email to a friend discussing, say, how my friend Dick was unhappy about the size of his annual bonus, Google scans the contents of my PRIVATE email, picks out key words and floods me with banner ads that promise me an upgrade in the downstairs department.
Ridiculous.
There are plenty of other examples I could use: from the inherent comedy of product placements (where a movie or a TV show “coincidentally shows the hero smoking a certain make of cigarettes or chewing a specific brand of gum) to the painful exchanges we’ve all had in fast food restaurants where you ask for one brand of soda and they apologize and inform you they only serve the other.
I have news for you, cretins: They’re both sugar-water!
But it’s not just the ad overload that bothers me. After all, advertising is all about being outspoken, remember?
My bigger problem is that the more ads you have, the less care seems to go into their craft and execution.
They become homogenized, churned out of an assembly line with little individuality, thought or flair.
They’re shiny and they’re polished but lacking a soul. They’re studies in déjà vu, rather than flirting with originality. They’ve been sanitized and focus-grouped and Hollywood-ized until they become perfect and flawless.
Which means they’re missing that indispensable ingredient that everyone seems to forget about. You know: a dollop of humanity.
Incidentally, remember that story I told you about what my dad told me when I was a kid?
I lied about one part of it: I was never a kid. See you next week.
Mohammed Nassarwas kidnapped at birth and forced to work in advertising, in Cairo, New York and London. Today, his main concern is that archaeologists will one day stumble upon his desk, debate the value of his profession and judge him.
