Dear Editor:
Love them or loathe them, in any media, advertisements are a given. But their quality, I believe, is at an all-time low!
Take for example the advertising associated within the automotive field. Has anyone told GM, Ford and Chrysler we are in the middle of an environmental crisis? Do we really need as many half-tons on the road as what they are promoting?
Still with the automotive field, have you noticed how many car ads focus on the actors behind the wheel rather than the attributes of the actual machine itself?
Another annoying form of advertisement is one where a condescending narrator repeats time and time again the same boring message. Whether it happens to be health insurance, life insurance, hearing or travel aids; their message is stale and annoyingly repetitive! (I now have the mute button handy when one of these ads appears.)
A third type of detestable advertising is one where people are put down or laughed at for a particular lifestyle, purchase of a competitor’s product, or simply not knowing another alternative .
The writer here is in his 70s but still with the majority of his senses; yet there are ads where the connection between product and background is lost beyond any sort of logical reasoning.
Often at the end of the ad, we are given a glimpse of the desired advertised connection and forced to determine for ourselves how it all fits together, as if by this point, we care.
I realize it costs money to design and produce an ad, and it’s understandably commercially vital to repeat the ad. Is it so very vital to repeat the same ad all evening to the point where the audience tunes it out? Worse yet, have you noticed the same annoying ad simply gets new actors to the same script, or possibly new background props?
Lastly, there are ads, particularly in the tech sector, that are certainly geared to a very small audience who understands the idiosyncrasies of the technology, but to the general public, make very little sense at all. I still don’t understand the connection between some sort of lizard and a cell phone.
Fortunately, not all advertisements are bland. The ones that do take our attention show a touch of creativity and humour while still getting across their message. I’m sure Ikea’s “Start the car!”, Buckley’s point man, and VW’s Tiguan series all demonstrate more than a little thought and imagination; and these are the ones, thank goodness, that stay with us.
Advertising and television, to paraphrase that famous song, “You can’t have one without the other.” True, but I do have my remote!
Ron Johnson,
Mount Forest