Month: January 2011

Evil Ad Empire Revealed – almost

I’m going to tell you a little secret.  There is no, I repeat NO, corporate conspiracy trying to turn us all into mindless consumers.  Advertising is not carefully contrived to make us want to buy things.  And there is no subliminal seduction in advertising.  I hate to burst your bubble, folks, but if you buy useless crap it’s your own damn fault.  How do I know these things?  Very simple, boys and girls: if there was a way to make advertising effective, those ruthless bastards on Madison Avenue would have used it by now to drive their own competitors out of business.  Q.E.D.  Personally, I think the whole conspiracy theory thing about advertising emerged in the 60s when large numbers of college students got the munchies and needed to explain to each other why they were eating Oreos and Twinkies instead of celery and whole wheat granola.

Here’s the truth.  Advertising, especially television advertising, is, at best, a brilliant art form and at worst a minor annoyance.  The creative people behind advertising — including the psychologists — are a bunch of shysters who are lying to their corporate masters.  Nobody really knows what makes people buy things.  However, ad people, over the years, have intimated that they can figure it out.  Their hidden agenda, if they even have one, is to secure a way to indulge their art and make bundles of money doing it.  The results are all those ads you see everywhere in our universe which are simply following trends that you, “the consumer,” have already set.  Look around you, folks!  Do you see any ads for sewing machines?  No! Why?  Because the great mass of people don’t sew anymore.  If advertising was the sinister force it’s always been proclaimed to be, there would still be ads for sewing machines, and people would still be buying them.  (Whether they sewed or not is a different matter.)

Here’s how ineffective advertising really is.  (I’m a little scared of getting sued, so bear with me.)  There is a company named after a fruit.  Their whole image is based on Young And Cool and they charge outrageous amounts of money for their product — which never goes on sale.   Their theory is that people will pay a lot extra for totally cool, and it works.   They started an ad campaign in 2006 which featured a comparison between a young, laid-back style of guy and an older, pudgy, suit-and-tie guy.  They introduced themselves, and, in the course of 30 seconds, they made fun of the pudgy guy and his product.  There were tons of variations on this original ad, and everybody recognized the scenario.  Unfortunately, after 3 years, there was no appreciable increase in sales.  In fact, the only result of the entire campaign was that people got turned off the company’s image of Young And Cool.  The ad was mercilessly lampooned on YouTube.  What happened was people began to feel sorry for the little pudgy guy because, after people had seen the ads 110 thousand times the jeans and t-shirt guy just seemed smarmy, sneaky and a bit of a bully.  It was an unidentified side effect of doing a direct comparison.  In general, people turned slightly against the company named after a fruit, because they perceived it to be mean-spirited.

This ad campaign cost literally tens of millions of dollars and generated a direct negative result.  So much for the corporate menace theory!  But, here’re the sprinkles on the doughnut.  There is another set of ads for a cell phone company in Canada which is using the same type of scenario and is producing a similar negative image.  Live and learn?  Doesn’t look like it!  The cell phone company is spending a dump truck full of money — just the same as the company named after a fruit did — for what is obviously going to be the same result.  My question is this: If the evil ad empire can manipulate whole populations at will, how come they’re not doing a better job at it?  The answer is simple.  Advertising is not that powerful, no matter what people say.  Let me explain using television ads as an example.

TV commercials are just little, itty bitty movies.  You have to have plot, character, conflict and resolution.  They have to contain all this in a 30 second package, and, in most cases, they have to be made in such a way that they can be cut in half and still make sense.  Then these ads are always shown with several other little movies in a tiny film festival, stuck between touchdowns in a football game, or something like that.  Plus, unlike regular movies, the mark of a good ad is not whether you remember it or not – that’s extra — it’s whether you remember the product or not –which is a good trick.  Given this set of constraints – and regardless of how brilliant the film maker is — the chances of an advertisement catching your attention is astronomical.  Believe me, Spielberg, Scorsese and Ridley Scott would all suck at making ads.  And by the way, radio and print ads are even more difficult. 

In actual fact, maybe at one time — when Mad Men ruled the earth — advertising was a powerful thing — to be respected and, perhaps feared.  But these days, it’s a weak sister to the much more powerful persuader: “word of mouth.”  So this weekend, when you discover all those new Super Bowl ads, sit back, relax and enjoy yourself.  You might be watching something that, 1,000 years from now, will be considered a masterpiece of early 21st century art.

It’s Oscar Season…again!

I love movies.  When I’m finally convicted of a capital crime my last request on Earth is going to be dinner and a movie.   Movies are one of humanity’s last intimate experiences.  They are personal, powerful and private.  That’s why people cry at the movies.  So it’s with great sadness that I take this opportunity to bitch about the movies and all the claptrap that clings to them like smeary stuff on Velcro.  Movie people are ruining movies. 

Normally, I don’t care.  I can avoid the artful dodger directors, the over-medicated actresses and Alec Baldwin.  I wouldn’t know Scarlett Johannson, off camera, if she hit me over the head with a 2-by-4, and I like it that way.   I don’t give a rat’s buttock for camera angles and lighting.  Nobody should, unless you’re a camera angle person or a lighter-upper guy.  But every year, at this time, the Academy Awards release the names of their nominees, and the pompous asses come out to pontificate like it’s cinematographic Hallowe’en.  It’s as if we all died with a sin on our soul and Purgatory is Entertainment Tonight.

First of all, if God had a modicum of mercy, He would put a stop to all these “Gimme an Award” award shows.  By the time the Golden Globes, The Screen Actors’ Guild, The People’s Choice etc. etc. etc. etc. get around to the Oscars, every living creature from Santa Barbara to Laguna Beach has a film award.  I’m surprised that all the people accepting their awards, night after night, have any time left over to actually make movies.  It must be embarrassing:
“I got a Golden Globe!”
“Yeah?  So did Bingo, my hairdresser.”
I’ll betcha they’re using them as hood ornaments on their Hummers.  It’s like the Student-of-the-Week certificate you got in grade school.  I kept mine for a while — until I finally figured out what Mrs. Cranston was up to.

This year’s Oscar nominees are remarkably similar to last year’s nominees, and the scary part is I haven’t got a clue what this year’s nominations are all about.  I take that back.  I know there’s one where everybody talks with an English accent; you’d have to be living on Jupiter not to have heard about that one.  (I’m betting my nickels it’s Colin Firth’s turn.)  There’s one with Jeff Bridges, a remarkable actor who can actually play The Big Lebowski playing a cowboy playing John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn.  There’s one about a true life struggle or the triumph of the human spirit or something.  There’s the perennial favourite They Came to Talk, a tale of heartwarming sadness, and then a whole pile of other ones.  Oh, yeah!  And everybody’s pissed ‘cause whatshisname didn’t get nominated, eh?  That’s par for the course.  A lot of people in this country are still mad at Hollywood because Men with Brooms never got anything.  This all sounds oh-so-catty, but, deep in your heart, you must know that the 367th running of the Academy Awards is getting a bit predictable.   And poor old Oscar is becoming woefully outgassed by all the other hardware that’s getting thrown around.

However, come February 27th, I’m going to watch — just like I do every year.  Oscar is still the Big Kahuna, Gidget, and Hollywood still makes good movies, despite what the CBC will tell you.  Of course, in recent history, I spend a bunch more time doing other things on Oscar night.  I check out the red carpet, for example, to see which bony bimbo shows up dressed as a turnip.  And I watch anxiously — all evening — to see if Johnny Depp finally achieves maximum cool and bursts into flame.  I’m getting a little tired of baby bumps, though.  Honestly, if Natalie Portman doesn’t want to practice Safe Sex, that’s her business.  And I’ve noticed it’s getting harder and harder for Sean Penn to even walk across the stage since he got that stick shoved up his ass.   Of course, that’s what’s wrong with the Oscars, isn’t it?  Movie people just take themselves too damn seriously.

Movies, films or cinema — depending on how far you went in college — are about entertainment.  Full stop.  Shakespeare knew this, centuries before he fell in love with Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench got an Oscar for a walk-on Elizabeth I (who came across as M at a costume party.)  But I digress.  Shakespeare and the boys invented show business, and they knew the reason people came to the Globe Theatre.  It was because they wanted to put their mundane lives on Pause and hit Play on their imagination.  After that, you can do what you want to.  But if Hamlet’s teenage angst hadn’t captured the crowd’s imagination in the first place, we’d all be watching bear-baiting on A&E.  Trust me; that’s where Shakespeare’s audience was headed when they saw the marquee.

Acting, directing and producing movies is hard work.  The people who do it are serious.  In the main, I like their product but not every “good” movie is a Testament to the Human Condition, and not every “good” character is a reflection of all of us.  I don’t care what a director is “trying” to do, nor how many critics stick their body parts in the air, in approval.  In the end it’s all make believe.  It’s been that way since Grog the caveman played the mastodon in the original Quest for Fire.  Come on! What are the chances that Darth Vader is Luke’s Dad?  I mean, really!

Tunisia: Part II — The Canadian Connection

There’s always been a lot of talk about how one person can make a difference, how one lonely effort can change people’s minds and how one unrelenting optimist can push the world forward and make it a better place.  I believe this.  But, like most people, I still have to do the dishes and take the garbage out, so my unrelenting optimism is tempered by the need to scrape the scrambled eggs out of the pan.  However, sometimes the stars align, the breeze blows sweet and the gods smile on us.  It isn’t every day a person gets to change the world, but here we are.  It’s a bored Wednesday in January, a million degrees below zero outside, and daytime TV sucks.  So what the hell, eh?

On Monday, in Tunisia, the military guaranteed they would maintain order in the country so the Jasmine Revolution could succeed.  The teachers and the police went on strike.  A mass of people from the south came to the capital, Tunis, to defy the curfew and set up shop until somebody starts listening to them.  The demonstrations continue and the interim government has promised to step down after they hold free elections.  For the people of Tunisia, their country is in flux, but they are beginning to imagine a better world.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to help them.

Go find a Tunisian.  It’s not that hard; they’re all over the place.  A big part of the Jasmine Revolution is being propelled by Facebook and Twitter.  That’s a good place to start.  There are also websites and blogs that have e-mail and comments.  And God only knows what other MySpace/Yahoo/Foursquare combinations are out there.  Use your imagination!

Take a look and see who these people are.  I guarantee you that they are not the crazy Arabs that CNN, Fox and CBC have been force feeding us for last 10 years.  These are ordinary people, just like you.  And here’s the shock: they don’t know very much about North America because they’ve been getting their information from CNN and Al Jazeera.

So you need to let them know who we are; it’s important.  You need to tell them that it’s impossible to find a decent pair of cheap jeans in this country.  You need to ask for a recipe for the stuff they put in a tagine and find out why it tastes so different from everything else in the world.  You need to explain that Starbucks is good but Horton’s is better (or vice versa.)  You need to ask them if rap music sounds just as bad in Arabic as it does in English.

In short, you need to make friends.  You need explain your ulterior motives too.  After all, you didn’t just wander by.  And, to coin a phrase, just because people don’t have running water doesn’t mean they’re stupid.  This isn’t a time for politics or religion.  The Tunisians can take care of that themselves, but they need to know why you’re there.  They need to know you’ve come to support what they’re trying to do.  And that you like democracy, faults and all, and you want them to have some, because, at the end of the day, democracies don’t fight with each other any more than friends do.  You need to do all this so you can change the world.

Right now, there are bad people coming to Tunisia.  They’re wearing out ponies trying to get there.   They’re coming for the free elections, and they’re coming to take over the Jasmine Revolution.  They want power and they will do anything — and say anything — to get it.  Given recent history, it won’t be a big leap for them to make us out to be the enemy, and this will help them in their attempt to seize power.  However, they won’t be able to do that if you get there first.

It’s just human nature to distrust what you don’t understand.  However, it’s hard to dislike a person you just shared a recipe with.  It’s hard to hate somebody you call by their first name.  It’s difficult to believe someone is evil when they have the same problems and concerns as you do.  And it’s impossible to build an enemy out of someone who plays the same games and laughs at the same jokes.  Hillary Clinton and Peter MacKay aren’t going to do these things; they’re going to try and buy their way in — just like they always do.  But if you take the time to show the Tunisians just how much we have in common, they might realize who their friends are.  And they might have a chance at democracy.

Tunisia is the epicentre of change in North Africa because all the good bits have come together at the same time.  It’s small in size and population: ideas and people can travel quickly.  It has a relatively young and well-educated population: its people have been exposed to new ideas and are young enough to accept them.  It has a fairly big middle class: Marx, Engels and Mao were wrong: revolutions aren’t made by poor people; they’re made by the middle class.

Most importantly, Tunisia exists in the 21st century, and its people are open to the ideas of the world.  With any luck at all, there are going to be free elections in Tunisia.  For the first time, the people of an entirely Moslem country have overthrown a dictator and are going to have a crack at deciding their own destiny.  If it works, there could be others, and if we help them, it just might work.  So, maybe, somewhere between the dishes and taking out the garbage, you might want to give them a hand.  Who knows?  You might just change the world.