Ad-ing it Up!

I’m in love with ads. My love affair is only a third grader though, still young, kind of in the honeymoon stage and definitely plans on evolving. But for now, my justification is the following.

Boring to Awesome: TV ads, and for the most part print advertising, have taken a new leap into “intelligent” humor. The kind of humor that asks the consumer to think for 3 seconds and say, “ohhh pfffttt….I get it!” and feel like not only are they “in on it” but like they’ve accomplished something http://msp.imirus.com/Mpowered/imirus.jsp?volume=ds10&issue=7&page=0 . A vital step for businesses, because there is silky thin fine line between snobby were-better-than-you “intelligent” humor (read, The Onion, Adbusters, The New Yorker), and “yo…faux genius…while you absorb all those waves why not engage your mind a smidge, it’s fun, we promise!” I think you get my point here.

Because a grander part of the TV watching population TiVos and DVRs shows, meaning fast forwarding past the commercials, advertising has had to do something revolutionary, taking the “Dear strong businessman, buy this car and not only will you own your customers, but you’ll own the road” to “hey there Mr. Handsome Suit Guy between the ages of 30-52, buy this car and you’ll get home quicker than your wife, in time to catch kick off for Monday Night Football, before she steals the TV to watch Gossip Girl.” It’s added an extra layer to power and money—humor, fun, dare I say…community, family. I think the new ads answer the question, “can there be both humor and relatable satisfaction in money and power?” with a big fat, “YEP.”

Obnoxious to Viral: But advertisements also realized that they need to please people instead of annoy them. A consumer would much rather watch a 20 second ad with a rich corporate guy driving a car, rushing home getting in Green Bay Packers garb to watch MNF, than watch a 20 second ad of some random douche bag, driving in an open highway with NO ONE else around wearing sunglasses in the dark saying something douchey like, “my car is awesome…what do you drive, sweetie?” It needs to be relatable, but slightly out of reach so people feel like they have something to work for, while not getting depressed that middle class is the only class and the economy sucks and…well anything related to real life. Magical but not unattainable.

Ads now need to make something good enough for the few people without TiVo or DVR to see an ad and say, “I’m going to post this on YouTube/facebook/twitter, because it’s badass and awesome, and I want my friends to know I have a sense of humor and I’m up to date with the cool shit.” Not only does it obviously increase sales (duh), but this saves money as it’s basically free advertising. Consumers are suckers, but at least this makes them pretty frigg’n cool suckers. I’ve never worked for an ad agency, but I imagine part of their mission would be, “make it awesome enough to become a viral video in a week, die out in three weeks and then come back to life six months from now in some random conversation and relive the cycle again (see, Old Spice commercial).”

Anatomy of Commercials in our Modern Era: Pithy, spunky, and maybe even emotional. Everyone with a mother knows that Hallmark commercials have owned the emotional side of advertisements since the dawn of commercials. But that’s outdated…people don’t want their emotions to be whored out to every hallmark or feed the children ad on television. I imagine the conversation between the Human and the Emotion is… “Whoa there cowboy…simmer down. It’s just Hallmark Mother’s Day commercial, don’t be so easy, you whore…get a hold of yourself and change your panties.” People want to work for their emotion; they want it to creep up on them like a mosquito at night. For example, I was watching the new iPhone 4 commercial that is meant to showcase the video calling feature. Actually, wait, let me preface this with, I don’t really cry…unless you’re breaking my heart, but those are usually not tears of sadness as much as they are anger. Anyway, so okay…so the scene is the girl not wanting to open her mouth and person on the other line is her father and he keeps trying to make her smile and then she finally smiles revealing a mouth full of metal…here’s the video:
When I first watched this video I was sitting on my couch eating Pop Chips and drinking wine—experiencing a moment of solitude after a long week of being overly social… and I bawled. It wasn’t like a loud cry, or angry or anything, it was like the floodgates of uncontrollable tears reserved from months and months of refusing to cry, were opened and there little to no end in sight.
I compare it to the moment in Ratatouille when Anton Ego takes a bite from Linguini’s “ratatouille” dish, and he’s taken far back to a comforting humble place—home, as a child. Yes, it was like that.

Brilliant though right? The ad is brilliant! It unexpectedly strikes all the right chords, because when you think iPhone, you don’t think “family. sweet. adorable.” You think, “Badass, now I can be like every other rich schmuck on the bus playing Angry Birds or Scrabble on my iPhone.” But yes, people want to be reminded that things that seem cold, technological, and a sign of wealth, are not those things necessarily, or at least not only those things, but so much more, they can remind you of home, or a moment in time when your dad was supportive of that mushroom haircut in the 6th grade and still said you were the most beautiful girl in the world. And not only can they remind you of home, but they can literally take you to that place…like magic. Well done Apple. Well done.

So…be it intelligently humorous, intelligently emotional, fully tactful and incredibly viral and fun and innovative. Ads have drawn me in…and right, I don’t have TiVo or DVR…so I’m one of those people who sit through commercials and ponder for days.

And while my love affair might end soon as I evolve and as they possible devolve…I will always remember the days of:
Sheer Laughter



Tactful hotness
,

And, just plain intelligence without the quantum physics crap

...Also, i realize i haven't really said anything revolutionary here...but i'm not trying to revolutionize thought, just trying to get mine out there.