Truth in advertising

I get that the more attention an ad gets, the more likely we are to buy the product or at least remember the name, but why do they have to insult our intelligence, irritate us and gross us out?  We like to be entertained.  Funny sells WAY better than icky.  I bet if ads were humorous, we’d be less likely to fast forward through them.  How many of us watch the Super Bowl just to see the ads?  I record it and fast forward through the football!  I don’t know – I don’t think these ad people think things through all the way.

Picture the scene:  The sun is shining.  A young woman in a sun dress is walking down a lovely, brownstone-lined street somewhere in New York City.  She gets to her stoop, joyfully bounds up the stairs to find a box from Amazon.com leaning against her door.  She opens it while still outside, pulls out her new Kindle Fire and sits on the stoop, playing with it.  Am I the only one that sees that there is NO way on God’s green earth that the package would be there, just leaning on the door, waiting for her?  And they don’t make those boxes easy to get into – she should have had a few broken nails and a mess of ripped cardboard and packaging all over the porch behind her!

Here’s one I don’t understand:  The mother and daughter in the Verizon store, blubbering to each other about the daughter moving “4.2 miles away”.  First of all, the sappy, snot-nosed crying is irritating to listen to.  Second, it’s 2012 and the daughter is an adult….you KNOW she had a smart phone WAY before that day, so quit yer sniveling!

Why do they make ads that make people look “innocently stupid”?  There’s an ad for the Oregon Community Credit Union with a couple and their small daughter standing in front of a lovely home.  The wife starts admitting that she and her husband have trouble making decisions, so when they went to pick out a kitten and had three to choose from, they couldn’t decide, so they took all three.  Really?!?  You can’t make decisions so you put yourself in a position to have to take care of THREE animals?  How did you two find each other?  No red flags?  This is why we so freely make fun of stupid people:  They just make it too easy. 

Here’s one that kind of makes me mad:  Magnum Ice Cream Bars.  The scene is a traffic jam on a desolate highway in the scorching heat.  Pretty girl sees the ice cream truck several cars ahead, gets out of her car, runs to the truck via the TOP OF ALL THE CARS IN FRONT OF HER, including a police car, and gets her ice cream bar.  The cop smiles at her and no one else seems irritated that some Barbie doll just walked all over their car.  Think about it:  If some “less attractive” woman had done that, the other car owners would have kicked her butt and the cop would have arrested her!  This ad is just mean.  Pretty girls can get away with whatever they want?  No wonder some young girls behave with such entitlement – the rules don’t apply to the pretty ones.

If the people who create ads would make them more humorous, or at the very least realistic, then maybe we’d pay more attention.  I love the Capital One Cash Rewards baby and the e-Trade baby.  Those are creative, funny ads.  I’ll tell you what….if marijuana is ever legalized, I can’t WAIT to see what THOSE commercials will look like.