This Is Poverty.com - 18 May 05

18 May 05
Marketing Monstrosities
Tobias

When you think about it, it's pretty god damn weird that we have a set portion of our television, radio and print space allocated to advertising. I mean, just look in this magazine - you'll see like thirty advertisements for alcohol on this page alone, as if to imply all three people reading this are raging alcoholics. I know that I, being a student myself, can't get through the day without my ESO on Speights 12-packs. You know, I am a student, after all. I think advertising only really matters to pretentious marketing students who say things like "I only watch TV for the ads" or something, because they're idiots who like to watch the same thirty second clips over and over again, the majority of which are about 30% less funny than this article. It is little surprise then, that these retarded students invariably go on to make ads themselves, the current monstrosities currently gracing our televisions being the result.

My personal favourite ad on television right now is the one in which a voiceover proclaims that Marqui Condoms is proud to sponsor the New Zealand Breaker Girls. The Breaker Girls being the cheerleaders of New Zealand's own utterly crap basketball team, the New Zealand Breakers. Now, there are a number of poor decisions here. First, why sponsor cheerleaders? Especially unattractive cheerleaders for a basketball team that really, really sucks? Secondly, if you were a condom company (and I know a lot of you are), would you really sponsor a team of cheerleaders called the BREAKER Girls? It's almost as if the crack marketing team behind Marqui Condoms thought to themselves, "well, we're fucking retarded, let's sponsor the most inappropriately named team of unsuccessful cheerleaders on earth." It's not like New Zealand is utterly devoid of bankrupt, useless sports franchises who will take any sponsorship they can get. I bet this crack team consists of the same kinds of people who eat paste, and enjoy Linkin Park.

Another favourite ad campaign of mine is the Persil "Dirt is Good" campaign. "What you don't see is kids creating mess... you see kids creating!" says a homely sounding guy on the voiceover. Oh, go to hell you prick. These ugly children of every conceivable minority go to the beach, and create an anatomically incorrect picture of a whale in the sand, using driftwood and other jungle supplies to aid them. Yeah, good move you losers. The "whale" will soon be washed away by the rapidly incoming tide, thus destroying the children's precious "creation" - leaving nothing but a lot of dirty laundry. I'd be bloody annoyed at my young, were I a parent of one of these children. The only remotely redeeming feature this ad has (and it's a stretch) is that the children proceed to a high rickety-looking clifftop from which they view their monstrous whale-like creation. Although the ad ends before anything happens, I am forced to assume that they all promptly fell off the poorly designed cliff to their deaths, as children are morons. Hopefully they'll make a continuing story out of these ads, such as the famous ASB "Goldstein" campaign.

The only thing worse than this "children are our future" empowerment is when companies decide to become "hip" or "savvy" with today's youth. The most obvious example of this is the complete and utter travesty of the "no rubba no hubba hubba" campaign, in which a fat poorly animated guy raps about safe sex, and if you're lucky you get to see an uncomfortable-looking gay couple making out. Well, I suppose if sex-ed in schools doesn't work (I remember my sex-ed teacher in fourth form yelling "slut! bitch! whore!" an awful lot), cartoon rappers will. And what do you do if your crappy cellphone company isn't doing too well? Give it a new hip-hop image, with hot sensations Savage and Mareko rapping the ad jingle (later to release it as their own single). I don't really think this is such a great marketing decision, because by appealing to hoodrats all Boost Mobile did is get a whole bunch of their cellphones stolen. Aside from having Mareko in the ads and their very own "Hook-Up" tour, I'm sure even hoodrats know that there is pretty much no difference whatsoever between Boost and Telecom. I mean, I know this and I don't even own a cellphone. My favourite hip hop themed advertising campaign, however, is Sprite Remix. I wonder who remixed the Sprite! I hope it was DJ Sir-Vere.

Of course, who could forget the 100% awesome Chupa Chups Cremosa ads? These ads rule because they are so incredibly cheap looking, not to mention poorly dubbed. You have to wonder, why the hell did they bother to overdub this from Spanish or whatever the hell language the people are speaking? I mean, it's not like it would've cost the Chupa Chups corporation much money to recreate a kid demanding another lollipop, and it may actually make the ad seem less retarded. In the ad, the kid eats a creamy Chupa Chups Cremosa, which was apparently made by harnessing the power of an ice cream machine, and then performs some sort of Third Reich salute to some guy behind a counter. "Can I have another one?" the English overdub says, replacing the original, which probably said "HEIL HITLER!" The guy behind the counter turns around, revealing himself to be a chillingly corpse-like old man. Inexplicably, he replies "sure, sugar free!" thus drawing the ad to its logical conclusion. The "sure, sugar free!" was recently replaced with an entirely different voiceover actor saying "I don't see why not, it's... sugar free!" while the old guy flailed his arms about wildly. You have to wonder why they made these changes, as the new script is no less baffling. I don't actually have any particular point about this ad, I just think it's awesome.

Every single class I have ever taken since fifth form has mentioned that people respond to ads because they aspire to the particular images purveyed by the advertiser. Every time this has been brought up, it’s been with an air of “but we know better” disdain on the part of the teacher. So, really, does anybody actually care about advertising? Does anyone actually respond to these apparent images? I don’t think I know anybody who does, but it looks like the whole idea of advertising is built upon a foundation which may or may not even exist. Choice!

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