Boycott stupid commercials!

[nafnikufesin]

Alright, I'm undertaking a new initiative as an excuse to avoid studying...boycotting stupid commercials.

Billions of dollars are spent every year by companies that flood our senses in every way possible with messages to buy their products. A recent survey revealed that 41% of Americans believe that the more a compnay advertises, the better the product. And obviously, advertisers are aware of this. Drive down any road, and the view will be cluttered with ads printed on any surface that will support it. Annoying jingles play repeatedly on the radio. Pick up any magazine, and you have to flip through 12 pages of ads just to get to the table of contents. Hour-long TV programs are actually only 42 minutes including credits. 5 billion pop-up ads come up if you go to any "free" web site. And out of the thousands of commercials we are exposed to on a daily basis, how many of them are relevant or at least entertaining? Maybe 1%. Enough is enough. It's time to strike back.

If a commercial annoys you, don't buy their product. Advertisers want you to remember their product name. I say, yes, remember their name, but remember it so that you know NOT to buy it, and go out of your way to buy from a competitor.

If enough people adopt this strategy, maybe someday, advertisers just might take notice.

So who are you going to boycott?

 

[nØthing]

I'll boycott Barbie and Polly Pocket. And the mainstream rap industry, MTV, and Rotorooter.

 

[mourningstar]

[RANT]
if more than 10 years ago jacques séguéla published a book who claimed "don't tell my mother i work in the adv, she thinks i play the piano in a brothel", soon someone will title a book "don't tell my mother i'm a professor, she thinks i work in the adv". this is more or less what a french guy expressed in an article about the growing power of the adv. to tell the truth, i hope he is more than right, since i wouldn't mind working in that field (advertising is related to what i'm studying at university, and it is - other than marketing - one of my favourite subjects).
i only partially agree with you, naf. you seem to make the assumption that if some adverts are silly, the whole advertising "world" is silly and there are no positive aspects. i don't want to spoil the fun of the thread, but let me just mention a couple of positive things about the adverts that are seldom considered and that can partially answer your post: loads of tv programs wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the commercials, magazines would cost three times their price (at least), not to mention all the cultural/social sponsorships. a second aspect often forgotten is that the adverts are (or at least are also meant to be) useful for the consumers, providing them the information required to make a better choice. then, if you see an advert and run to buy that product, well, that's human frailty, who do you want to blame?

of course i agree there are loads of stupid adverts; unfortunately they are made on the basis of the average person's intelligence, and are seldom used to increase it, while it would be desirable things worked the other way around.
[/RANT]

a stupid advert i can remember: there was a close-up of this woman and a packet of french fries beside her face. and a writing: "la patata tira"; now, "patata" means potato, but if we think that it is also the slang for vagina, and we add that "tira" more than "attracts" was meant to sound like "causes hard-ons", we can understand why it was soon changed into "la patata attira", a more suitable verb to mean "attracts". not that after the change it was any less stupid

 

[Tristessa]

I second mourningstar opinion

A stupid ad I can remember: There's a horrible ad about women's rights or sth (it really makes me mad ) and there's a couple, both seem to be naked, the man's back in the front and the woman face over his shoulder. Her hand's holding a sheet which says "More, women want more.... respect, wage, etc"

 

[Demonic Rapture]

I boycott anything Carrot Top is trying to sell me. Have you seen that dude lately? He's shaven his eyebrows and wears mascara. And I'm sick of George Foreman grills. Honestly, do we NEED these goddamn things in different colors? I'm skeptical of any ad-man that names all of his children "George". And all of these cell phone commercials.

 

[Caelestia]

sorry, naf, i'm gonna hafta side with mourningstar too. what i'm studying at uni also has something - a lot - to do with advertising.

i do agree though that the majority of the ads out there is absolute rubbish. you can blame it on lack of creativity, ignorance, arrogance, or just the fact that many advertisers want to play it safe.

great ads, on the other hand, are entertaining, absorbing and sometimes you can learn a thing or two

 

[Tristessa]

great ads, on the other hand, are entertaining, absorbing and sometimes you can learn a thing or two

Yep! Like Coca Cola's "For talls, for shorts... for everyone!" It's just fantastic! It doesn't make me drink coke, tho, cause I don't like soda, but I really enjoy it. And dunno if i learnt sth, but entertaining and absorbing, it is indeed.

 

[Demonic Rapture]

I'm all for commercials for youth sponsorships, big brother/big sister programs, Feed the Need, cancer awareness, diabetes awareness. All having to do with the much needed look into mental/physical health for our culture.


But...cat litter? There's 874723974 kinds of cat litter. Do I really need to see a commercial for each one? But, on the other hand, it keeps all of these GREAAT T.V. shows like Fear Factor and Who Fucked Raymond alive and kicking.


I'm going with naf on this one.

 

[mourningstar]

And all of these cell phone commercials.

yeah, that's another thing i hate. when phones ring in the commercials i always think it's mine and i get up to check, even in the cases where the sound is totally different from mine

But...cat litter? There's 874723974 kinds of cat litter. Do I really need to see a commercial for each one?

i don't remember i have seen any here in italy. maybe because i don't watch enough tv, or maybe because in the us you love cats more. if i had a cat, it could very well sleep in (someone else's) garden.

 

[Caelestia]

good thing i don't have a cellphone

and i've never seen a cat litter commercial. i'm so deprived

 

[nafnikufesin]

No offense meant to the marketing people here. I think I ranted a bit more than I originally intended. I recognize that in this day and age, advertising is a fact of life, and subsidizes the cost of many things. The point I was really trying to make is that life is too short for us to have to put up with the bad commercials.

Like Gap ads that show a close-up of somebody's beautiful face, without showing the clothes that they're supposedly trying to sell.

Like L'Oreal's "Out of Bed Lasting Messy Effect" hair gel...excuse me, but most people use hair products to avoid looking like they just got out of bed.

Like Aldo Shoe company ads that show beautiful models faces holding the shoe in their hands...are they that uncomfortable that the models refuse to wear them?

Like Amsterdam beer ads that show nothing but a woman dressed in lingerie. Hey, I like women dressed in lingerie, but what the hell does that have to do with beer?

Like any company that uses Britney Spears or any one of her little clones as a spokesmodel. I see too much of these manufactured plastic whores everywhere else, I don't need to see more of them in commercials.

Like Nike, that would rather pay Jordan and Tiger billions of dollars to use their products instead of hundreds of dollars to the sweat shops that make them.

That's the kind of shit I'm talking about.

 

[Weapon X]

Amen brotha

Naf your so right on about those lame ads.

I don't mind those funny comercials, they can be quite entertaining. Like the one where a guy and a girl are playing Twister and the chick has her face up his ass and one of his buddies ask the guy if he took medicine for his bowl movements

 

[Manga-San]

They made fun of the beer commerials on Family Guy...

"Buy Patriot Beer, and beautiful women will have sex in your back yard..."

 

[mourningstar]

Like Amsterdam beer ads that show nothing but a woman dressed in lingerie. Hey, I like women dressed in lingerie, but what the hell does that have to do with beer?

nothing, really. but always bear in mind this: "advertising is female (at least in italian, in english you don't have genres for everything), but the advertising agent is male"

 

[ante]

Like Gap ads that show a close-up of somebody's beautiful face, without showing the clothes that they're supposedly trying to sell.

Like L'Oreal's "Out of Bed Lasting Messy Effect" hair gel...excuse me, but most people use hair products to avoid looking like they just got out of bed.

Like Aldo Shoe company ads that show beautiful models faces holding the shoe in their hands...are they that uncomfortable that the models refuse to wear them?

Like Amsterdam beer ads that show nothing but a woman dressed in lingerie. Hey, I like women dressed in lingerie, but what the hell does that have to do with beer?

Like any company that uses Britney Spears or any one of her little clones as a spokesmodel. I see too much of these manufactured plastic whores everywhere else, I don't need to see more of them in commercials.

Like Nike, that would rather pay Jordan and Tiger billions of dollars to use their products instead of hundreds of dollars to the sweat shops that make them.

as weapon X said, Amen

 

[mourningstar]

there's this cool one i saw during a course: the setting is the kitchen of a trendy and nice restaurant. everything seems to be perfect, but then you see the cook who passes the steak in the wc before putting it in the pan, then he's garnishing this beautiful dish and ends it putting on top something taken directly from his nose, and spits in the dessert. at this point, you're like "bleah" and don't want to go to the restaurant for the next, say, 3 years. a writing appears: "P.S. stay home"; the writing fades but the P and the S, and "playstation" appears.


this other one was for a soup, you know those ones you just have to put in the microwave and are quickly done.
well, there are this man and this woman who are coming out of the bedroom, and you understand they've just had sex. you can tell the woman is quite unsatisfied, while the man is smiling with a face like he's just done the performance of the century. the microwave rings, the woman takes the soup out, and a close-up of the packaging shows "ready in 3 minutes" i loved it.


oh, those are ads i liked. i went off-topic :Spin:

 

[SculptedCold]

stop advertising nafnikufesin! i'm not listening!

 

[Jax]

The ones that drive me nuts are the Victoria's Secret ads with the half dressed women..do they really think watching other women writhing around half-naked is gonna make me buy their underwear? I think not. May appeal to men, but men aren't the ones buying my underwear.

 

[SculptedCold]

A couple things about that; for one, they're not going to do the ad with guys wearing Victoria's Secret lingerie. That just wouldn't go down well with anyone.

Another, because men react more strongly to visual sex suggestion, and because TV is a primarily visual medium, they deliberately channel the temptation to the men and thereby make them interested in women (hopefully theirs) and they associate that interest with Victoria's Secret. Hence, they may talk to their partner about it or, shock, they may try and buy it themselves for their gal! Doomed to disaster I know.

Also, the women watching will no doubt, in most cases, be able to figure that their men find it attractive and stimulating watching the commerical. A Victoria's Secret ad is aimed at women/couples who are more likely to have an active sex life, or a conscious desire to feel sexy otherwise, so that target market (especially the femmes) is more likely to respond by wanting Victoria's Secret and buying it. The women in the ad arouse the men, which in turn lets the female know what/how to please their guy (or it could just come down to jealousy of course; the female possibly believing they are/can be as attractive as those in the commercial). So it works out very easily.


Arguably, these smooth processes of sexual power wouldn't happen if a) there was no nice naked flesh going about in the add or b) there was, but it's guys cavorting in lingerie. The guys who see that would thereby not find Victoria's Secret attractive, and not encourage or like their femmes wearing it.

 

[Stoner Sioux]

Those stupid video game commercials that show people fighting. I'm just not into that shit.