#james writes an incredibly cynical and nihilistic post

[safestsephiroth]

some thoughts about advertising, or: America Gothic

(”America Gothic” is not to be confused with “American Gothic”, a painting widely parodied by people who often have no idea why they’re parodying it, because they’re parodying a parody of a parody of a parody of a painting about how much the Dust Bowl sucked but this time it’s to sell something because irony is dead, we dragged it out into the back and beat it to death with a garden spade in time to be confused by the huge dust storms all over.)

I’ve never had any formal training in advertising but I’ve done an unhealthy amount of research into it (for someone who never planned to work in marketing) and I’ve noticed some consistencies.

1: Car salesmen (drawing from a sample size of four different US states, so not universal) are the absolute worst at advertising. I am almost positive that practically every local car sales ad I’ve seen was made by the car salesman themselves to stroke their ego, rather than sell their cars. There is a modern nobility (in the sense of inheriting a public role through the family) and one manifestation for certain is the car sales racket, and dear god does it show.

2: Apparently, women do not sell cars. Women sit next to men who sell cars, sometimes holding children they may or may not have produced with said men.

2a: (In case you can’t tell, I’m being sardonic.)

3: Annoying your customers doesn’t work long term. Companies that use ads that are extremely irritating are either guaranteed to survive and therefore have nothing to lose (Are local car salesmen prosperous enough to own multiple stores ever going to go away if the industry itself doesn’t change? I sincerely doubt it. They can advertise any way they want - people need a car, people will buy a car, and since every single fucking car salesman is a drill in the ears and a lit match in the eyes, they all are equal in the awareness of the tormented) or tend to take serious losses over the long term and end up issuing retractions and apologies, in extreme cases.

3a: Did you know that if you say that ~50% of the planet isn’t allowed to use your product, particularly if it’s the ~50% that most get shit on by advertising as an industry, it isn’t a good decision?

3b: Trying to hardcore pander to a gender identity isn’t particularly smart in general - there is such a thing as bad press, and one type of bad press is the bad press that has you hit with so much vitriol that Andy, the intern you have do all the work nobody else wants to do, gets a hernia trying to carry all the letters and you thank God you can fire him without having to pay anything because he’s too stupid to sue you, which, really, is why you hired him in the first place.

4: Your method of advertising must absolutely be altered to fit your given product or industry. “Where’s the Beef” is still remembered as an advertisement because it worked at the time as an indictment of the alleged lack of fulfilling hamburgers from the opposition. “Where’s the Beef” may be a good way to market other products (brass knuckles, baseball bats, golf clubs, switchblades, condoms[?]) but it is not a good way to market many other things (tampons, mouthwash, salads.)

4a: Speaking of salads, salads aren’t funny. And if your ad so perfectly mirrors other ads from other companies selling the same thing, and those ads mirror other ads selling the same thing, it’s time to change your goddamned advertisement, for fuck’s sake. Don’t end up on a masterlist making fun of you and your competition because all you accomplished is getting across that you and the rest are exactly the same. This is bad.

5: Marketing isn’t dying as an industry, marketing is massively changing as an industry. Traditional methods of marketing are no longer viable, and hamfisted attempts to shove those same advertising methods where they don’t fit are misguided.

5a: That being said, advertising is a remora riding the underbelly of the economy. It’s a bloated industry that can only be carried when money is being spent to support it. If nobody has money to buy something, then the ads dry up. No amount of television ads will significantly increase mansion sales.

5b: This is why food advertising is so pervasive and aggressive. You can’t force someone’s brain to tell them “You want a house” by showing them a picture of a mansion. You CAN force someone to think about the concept of eating, which, because our imperfect meat bodies leave much out of our direct control, can inspire hunger. And if they just saw a hamburger and want a hamburger they’re that bit more likely to get a hamburger.

5ba: Incidentally, if you show the viewer an attractive person wearing jeans to try to sell them jeans, you are far more likely to sell them on the idea that jeans are acceptable clothing for sex than you are that they should buy your jeans.

5baa: Sheep have never been used well in advertising.

5bab: Never, ever have your baby in a used car ad, dumbass. Literally no one who’s thinking about what car to buy gives a rat’s fetid asshole that the wife you don’t deserve popped out another child your ungrateful, worthless ass can use to sell cars. Or furniture, too, for some reason.

6: According to advertising, people in the united states military wear crisp and clean uniforms, ride/play with expensive toys, and save innocent people from the evils of empty rooms. Never have they ever fired a gun at an enemy. And every single one of them is happy to be there so they can go to college and replace their financial debt with a moral, psychological or ethical one.

6a: Or a medical one that, due to how the US is, doubles as a free financial burden, too.

6aa: I mean you can technically file for help from the VA. You can also burn ants with a magnifying glass, spray yourself in the face with a hose for a few hours, take up woodburning, or take up cannibalism. You can do anything, and the VA will tell you to shove a spiked whip straight up your ass regardless of what you do.

7: If your company made a Christmas advertisement and it’s old enough that baby boomers remember it, keep it. Forever. Forever and ever. Every single year, it’s our sworn duty as a country to perfectly imitate the ideal false vision of what Christmas was for white people in the 1950s and anyone who threatens to change that will be destroyed without trial.

7a: You are permitted to hire an uninterested popular musician in need of money to sing a Christmas song, sure, but it has to be a song sung at some point by either Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra, and if it isn’t you’ll go straight to Hell for your sin against Christmas.

8: The respect your brand will be given by people under the age of 40 is directly correlated to how many times you call it a “Brand”, how many social media networks they’ve already seen what your ad is referencing on, whether or not your ad thinks “the kids” will think it’s cool (if the answer is “yes”, then the answer is “no”) and many other factors.

9: If your audience senses a whiff of condescension, pull the plug. Nobody will buy your product if you’re calling them a fucking idiot while you sell it unless they have no other choice, and if they have no other choice then you’re wasting your money on the ad.

10: If your ad includes the word “Millennials”, regardless of context, regardless of message, regardless of what your product is, it will never sell to anyone who has ever thought of themselves as one. There are no exceptions to this rule.

10a: There are exceptions to every rule that has ever been made (including this one and that one), and the exception to this rule is that if your advertisement is not perceived as an advertisement, you’re golden.

11: The old wave of advertising was to lie about products to sell things. The next wave was to lie about how people would feel about products to sell things. The latest, greatest, surest-to-work way is also the hardest: Lie to people about the fact you’re trying to sell them something in the first place. The ad that works best is never known to be an ad at all. This is also true of the Devil, flagrant lies, murders and high treason.

12: “Someone else did it/is doing it” is not a justification. Even if you think you did it better. Sometimes, even if you actually are doing it better.

13: People complaining, in and of itself, isn’t the problem. People complain about everything. People complain about the weather, and yet it keeps doing whatever it wants and they rarely ever move. The problem is when they complain so much or so loudly they remember the complaint more than a few months, in which case you’re in deep shit.

14: There’s a window in which jumping on a bandwagon works. That window is wider or narrower based on how well you do it. Even if you do better than the starter of the train, it’s possible that won’t be enough if you took too long.

15: If your advertisement is funny, it banks some significant good will. This can easily backfire, especially if your advertisement thinks it’s funny but it isn’t.

16: At some point, someone may say: “Let’s make the ad a franchise!” Seeing as it’s best to rip a bandage off quickly to lessen the overall pain, these people must be shut down immediately. If they persist, termination is recommended.

16a: Do you remember how many failed attempts at a lasting ad franchise there have been? Do you? Do you remember?

16b: No, you don’t, because nobody does, because they were that bad. The closest anything comes to that is “hey, remember the Geico cavemen?” “Yeah, what a fucking trainwreck that shit was, god.” One good idea, sell it, move on.

17: If a product is good enough, they won’t have to market at all. You will only be making advertisements for products the target audience has never heard of, ever, or you’re going to be lying. You’re going to have to lie to tell the audience that what you’re selling is better than the competition across the board in every respect. And, again, it WILL be a lie, because if it weren’t then you wouldn’t have a job. The entire industry’s very existence, as it is, is predicated on the fact that if people were honest it would disintegrate overnight.

17a: If you can’t come to terms with this, I hear gardening is nice.

17b: Make sure you buy the more expensive dirt, though, because it was harvested from high-value property and the dirt from rich people’s front yards grows better plants.

17c: In all seriousness, if you try to raise a garden purely on bagged topsoil you deserve what comes next and no one will ever feel sorry for you.

18: You will never, ever be as successful as Debeers, Coca-Cola or Hallmark - and that’s okay. Audiences these days are too smart to fall for that level of lie, using that type of methodology, for those specific products.

19: Never, ever, ever, EVER put a price into your catchy jingle. Subway employees will be pestered about $5 footlong sandwiches for the next five years, despite this promotion having died out long ago.

20: Slave/underpaid labor means making sure nobody thinks about why your prices are so low.

20a: That being said, all you have to do is keep your mouth shut once it comes out, pay the news companies to shut their faces and let it go away. As long as your prices stay low, it’ll go away.

21: In the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the titular character manages to convince his peers to pay him for the privilege of doing shitty work he doesn’t want to do and thank him for the opportunity. This is absolutely doable - just look at any Bethesda game. If you can swing this, you’re going to have so much money you can make a hang glider out of it that might keep you afloat longer before you descend straight to hell where you belong.

21a: A similar route’s possible, where you sell someone a product that doesn’t have any redeeming qualities but does have plenty of flaws by making it look vaguely aesthetically pleasing, paying people to use them and make them look good, and then instill in your audience the idea that if they get the thing they have the right to lord it over everyone else they know who hasn’t, regardless of how horrible the thing actually is. You’d be ripping off Steve Jobs, of course, but he did nothing but rip people off his entire career so really it’s more of an homage if anything.

22: In the end, nobody wins in advertising. Your name won’t be remembered as an advertiser, you’ll be reviled by people with souls and ethics and praised by people whose side of the fence you shouldn’t be happy to stand on. No major world religion will celebrate you (unless your untruth game is so strong you convince them to) and, ultimately, no divine being that anyone at all coherent would bother believing in will forgive you. Ultimately, no matter how good a liar you are, if you’re smart enough to really make it consistently big you’ll never truly, fully be able to bullshit yourself.

22a: But with enough money, you’ll probably be able to forget about that preachy stuff, right?

#marketing #james writes stuff that isn't poetry for much #I don't have a tag for this stuff #uhhh #james writes prose #james writes for humorous effect knowing that long text posts will never #ever #be read as much as he desperately hopes #james writes an incredibly cynical and nihilistic post #that no one will respect him more for #and then questions if it's a cry for help #because not even he can tell