Another excellent post, caffeinegoddess. I bow before the altar of your brilliance.
However, I must take exception with John Hegarty's assertion that "it's wrong to blame (junk food) advertising" for contributing to health problems such as obesity. As caffeienegoddess rightly points out, consumers must certainly shoulder the bulk (no pun intended) of the blame; no one is forcing them to pig out on Whoppers and Egg McMuffins and Hostess Ding Dongs. And yes, as Mr. Hegarty notes, the manufacturers are not exempt either: They are the ones who make the stuff in the first place.
But the ad agencies who push this junk can't shed their share of responsibility. After all, they were hired for their ability to move product and motivate people. They may only be guilty of doing their job too well, but they're guilty all the same.
Ignorance is no excuse. Is there any sentient being out there who is not aware that fast and/or junk food is inherently unhealthy? Would Mr. Hegarty say that ad agencies who shill cigarettes are not to blame for lung cancer?
This brings to mind the contretempts that recently erupted in the pages of ADWEEK recently when Steven Grasse of Gyro accused Crispin Porter of being hypocrites for vilifying tobacco advertising on the one hand with their TRUTH campaign and selling greasy hamburgers on the other. While Mr. Grasse's objectivity is subject to question (his agency has done quite a bit of cigarette advertising), he was dead on the money.
Gee, I dunno. Not to wax political or anything, but it's not exactly like the choices in this election are particularly, uh, exciting. It's less about having it "your way" and more about compromising - the lesser of two evils, as it were, or the evil of two lessers. Is that how I should think of Burger King? That I can have only what they're willing to give me rather than what I really want?
Where have you gone, Lyndon LaRouche, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. . . woo woo woo.
Personally, I'm utterly underwhelmed by the Ad Hoc (or Hack) Campaign for Coke. Just take the positioning line: "Cool American." For one thing, nobody who's "cool" uses "cool" to describe themselves. (Well, I do, but I'm not cool.) And, OK, Coke may be American. But where does Pepsi come from? Albania? And how well will the American angle play overseas? In case Mr. Webber and his brain trust hadn't noticed, Americans aren't particularly popular outside our own borders these days.
Mr. Webber and his colleagues from the "Hollywood creative community" (a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one) seem to have little regard for traditional ad agencies. They may have a point: It's not like the current Coke work is anything special. But what they've created is a screenwriter's idea of an ad campaign. It's like something you'd expect to see Darren Stephens present to Larry Tate.
I agree, Caffeinegoddess, that's a nice quote. The irony is that many of today's "hottest" shops do exactly what Lubars decries: They try to reach consumers through elaborately conceived and constructed multi-media hoaxes (i.e., Weiden's Beta 7 campaign for Sega, Crispin's BMW Mini "Robots").
The article itself was very interesting - and very depressing. Hearing someone as talented and intelligent as Lubars talk about marketing in terms of marriage and relationships makes me cringe. OK, I know we're all basically whores in this business. But really - you should have relationships with other people, not peanut butter or sneakers or soft drinks or cars. This is the kind of materalism runk amok that gives advertising a bad name to begin with.
I can't see how anyone could possibly take offense to the plus-sized Statue of Liberty.
The skyscrapes collapsing in flames and clouds of dust, on the other hand - well, even if they aren't literal representations of the Twin Towers, it's still stunningly insensitive.
What's truly disturbing, however, is how crude the illustrations are. They make Ernie Bushmiller look like Frank Frazetta.
"Ad creep?" Ad creepy is more like it. To me, the notion that "virtually no experience will be commercial-free" is chilling, not thrilling.
I would certainly agree that advertising should engage your interest, not insult your intelligence. But some of the so-called "stealth strategies" cited in the article seem to cross the line into deception and manipulation. Selling though subterfuge will only serve to reinforce consumer cynicism in the long run. If everything's a come on, a hustle, a sales pitch, who can you trust?
Instead of trying to sneak your message in under the radar, why not engage in an open and honest dialog with consumers? If your ad is entertaining enough, there's no need to cloak it in secrecy. As Howard Gossage once said (and I'm quoting from memory here, so I probably don't have it quite right), "People read what interests them - and sometimes it's an ad."
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This scandal raises a number of profound questions - namely, how can I get to be an art director at Grey?
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