Wal-Mart

There is a general understanding between consumers and advertisers.

Advertisers, for their part, represent themselves in a way which is more or less true but that wholly omits any aspect of their business or product which is unflattering. They're obliged, legally, not to lie to us but they're allowed to embellish the good bits.

We, as consumers, then acknowledge that the advertiser is blowing smoke up its ass and agree not to be totally disappointed when what is delivered doesn't perfectly match what is promised.

This understanding is at work daily. We see one burger on television and get another burger at the drive through. The sandwiches aren't quite identical, but close enough.

So what's with Wal-Mart?

I'm astonished to see the Wal-Mart ads on television. Where are these clean, cheerfully-staffed establishments? Have I actually ever been to the Wal-Mart they're talking about on television? The stores I've visited must be knock offs that are clearly infringing on the Wal-Mart brand and trademark.

In the ads, the stores are sparkling, both from the smiles of their employees and from the clean, clear sightlines and waxed floors. Wal-Mart employees are happy, motivated, eager-to-please individuals whose lives depend on making their customers' days better.

Further, Wal-Mart ads depict customers who love to shop there. Everything they want is there. And it's cheap.

Now let's examine reality. Wal-Mart employees rarely if ever greet me, even if they are cashiers checking out my products. They are a surly lot more interested in completing menial tasks than in assisting the customer. Wal-Mart floors are routinely cluttered with pallets and when they aren't, the linoleum is scuffed and worn.

Wal-Mart customers?

"Ugh, Wal-Mart? I don't want to go there. Can we go to Target?"

The only truth in their advertisement is the cheap part. Yeah, Wal-Mart is cheap. When you strongarm distribution deals and intimidate major companies, you can offer chocolate bars at 42 cents each.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a capitalist deep in my bones. By all means, make money and have big businesses. Just, stop patronizing me. We all know Wal-Mart is a shithole. Just remind me of the prices and move along, if you please.

Sharper Image

I remember my first visit to a Sharper Image store. It was described to me as a "gadget store," which is a dramatically exciting concept to an eight year old boy. I was amazed and astonished both by the items in the store and by their prices.

Sharper Image is a good looking place. Clean lines. Metallic surfaces. Plenty of glass. Their brand logo, the unmistakable sans-serifed, all caps "SHARPER IMAGE" is the picture of polish, snazz, and refinement. James Bond would be at home in this store.

Thus is an image crafted over the course of years, slowly chiseled into the synaptic patterns of your every day consumer.

This must cost, what, millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? The sky is the limit.

So what kind of idiot would take such an investment, use it wipe himself, and flush it down the toilet?

I'm not sure. But there are apparently many, many such idiots currently employed at Sharper Image.

Sharper Image is relentlessly marketing an air purifier system. Let me define relentlessly for you. I mean I see their ads at least three times, daily. Sometimes double that. This isn't a big deal. Everyone buys ads.

Yet the Sharper Image ads are among the most embarassing, amateur, Infomercial-esque pieces of garbage the American public will ever be exposed to. The music is pure synth, ripped straight off a royalty-free library. The colors and titles are not even remotely reminiscent of the Sharper Image brand. The only thing tying this abomination to Sharper Image is their logo, which crops up with regularity, as well as the obnoxious announcer continually crowing "...from Sharper Image."

It is astonishing to me that such a store, with such an image, would choose such a graceless, pedestrian means of promoting a major product. It may simply be that the air purifier is their last, best hope. It's possible that people don't want to pay $150 for a Swiss Army knife that also functions as a sexual aid. In such a case, it really doesn't matter.

In any case... wow. What a way to tarnish a brand.

Circuit City

There's a certain electronics chain. Their ads have never once told me about specific prices or promotions. They sell me on the store, on how fun it must be to shop there, about how the people who serve you there are your best friends.

This chain is the number one electronics retailer in the US.

This chain is Best Buy.

Now, having worked there I can tell you that the above picture isn't completely true or completely false. But it is effective advertisement.

Now let's look at Circuit City. For a long time, Circuit City made me very angry. They pitched so much. They rambled for a minute at a time about weekend promotions. Price breaks. Discounts. On and on.

Then, one day, Circuit wised up. They decided to sell their store, rather than their products. Internally, their We're with you campaign was heralded as a new direction for the retailer. It would address the irritation customers felt with return policies and pushy sales people. It would position Circuit as the place to go for holiday shopping convenience. It would make Circuit a friend to the consumer.

It was very effective. The ads were some of my favorites.

Then, it's as though somebody died. Today, all I hear about Circuit City is how HP laptops are on sale this weekend. Something about a rebate. Amusingly, they still say "We're with you" at the end of every spot, as though the phrase were a bit of magic dust that would imbue their banality with the charm of their better ads.

Best Buy continues to be the national consumer electronics retailer of choice.

Hummer - Big Race

I was gonna talk a bit about the H2 ad with the kid and the soapbox car race, but then I stumbled onto this piece at Slate, which says everything I could have covered, and more.

Word. Stick to the commercial man.

DirecTV

DirecTV does things pretty well. I used to sell it, when I worked at Best Buy, and it was rare to bump into someone who'd had a bad experience with the satellite provider. They round out their excellent service with an excellent image - due in no small part to some really good advertisements.

My favorite of DirecTV's admittedly large portfolio of slam dunks has to be their recent use of actors to read, with unbridled gusto, the letters sent by DirecTV customers who praise the service. So far I've seen Andy Garcia, Laurence Fishburne, and Joan Cusack and all three have been infinitiely satisfying.

And really, who among us could convincingly read a letter with the words "jumping Jehosephat, yee-ha" better than Laurence Fishburne?

I think the best part of these ads is the lack of sleeze. Ours is a cynical culture. When we see celebrities doing ads, in many cases there may as well be the words "sell out" scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

But this is a totally different approach. These actors aren't endorsing DirecTV, not explicitly, anyway. They're only acting out real and true testimonials from honest-to-god consumers who think DirecTV is, according to subscriber Chris Kopency, "Great."

So it's the best of all worlds. And I wouldn't be a student film maker if I didn't note that from a stylistic viewpoint, these spots look pretty cool. The use of an undecorated, tastefully lit soundstage is a very nice touch. Seems to confer that much more legitimacy to the letters being read.

There's no substitute for quality.

Cingular Nation

I hated Cingular ads for awhile. They were doing it wrong. Cingular basically spent thirty or sixty seconds making their logo fit into various naturally-occurring patterns. It was commercial masturbation.

Now they're talking about substance and I like it. Their Nation plan allows consumers to stop worrying about wireless roaming. It portrays your average Joe or Jane lamenting about their wireless provider offering nationwide plans that aren't actually nationwide.

The one I just saw was priceless, featuring a basketball-attired man whose sweat band covers his eyes:

"If I can't see the coverage area, how am I suppose to stay in it?"

He then proceeded to bump into a rack of basketballs.

This is funny. This appeals to a broad audience. This grabs boring audience members, like me, as well as athletic audience members. It appeals to the young who hate restrictions and to the old who hate to spend money without realizing it. This is the way it should be.

Bravo.

Back to Back

What's with advertisers playing their spots consecutively? Lately I see a lot of this, mainly from the Berkeley Neutraceuticals people who are trying to market pep-up and sex-up pills for men and women. I'm not going to name these brands - I'm displeased with their repetition and dubious credibility.

But why do companies feel the need to do this? The ultimate rule in showmanship is to leave the audience wanting more. For a time, Geico was doing this back-to-back thing, but eventually they wised up. (For that matter, Geico ads have been on the ramp up for awhile. I'll talk about them in another post.)

Television advertising is very much a game of seduction. A good spot lures you in, gently, gives you an incredible time and leaves you with a smile on your face. You might see it a few more times. It might be a one-time thing. But you enjoy yourself and life is good.

When an advertisers are bad at seduction you brush them off. Having them try again with only slightly different moves is an annoyance. Persistence is not an advertising virtue.

Suzuki Forenza

Believe it or not, I made Ad hominem specifically because I wanted to rant about this ad.

Suzuki is like that kid you knew in school who tried way too hard. He wasn't, you know, a bad guy or anything. Just kind of annoying, what with the trying too hard all the time.

Except I can tell Suzuki exactly how much it sucks and not feel at all bad about it.

To start, there's the ugly Suzuki logo. What is that thing? Suzuki uses a stylized letter S as a hood emblem. It sort of looks like the sort of banal grafitti cholos paint under bridges. This throwback from 1973 needs to go.

Next, let's talk about "Forenza." What the hell is that? Car names always strike me as a little off, but I really don't mind so long as they're more or less derived from familiar words. Or, even, are familiar words. Accord. Mystique. Eclipse. These are all acceptable car names.

But. Forenza.

It reminds me of the English documentation found in Asian manufacturers' products.

Sample:
"This product is under strict quality contril with perfect packing and quality when leving the factory."

Random syllabic groupings do not a car make.

Now to the spot. It starts out promisingly. There's the Jefferson's theme, feels good. But I don't know why the theme is there. These boring, plain, completely unremarkable people are driving around a stadium parking lot. And it's just boring. Everything is there. Classic pop culture music nod, a red car, and nothing is happening. I feel no empathy for the parking morons. At the last minute, they just pull into a VIP parking space.

Why, uhm, didn't they just go there in the first place? Why did Suzuki's Parking Losers waste thirty seconds of my time when they could have parked their ugly red car in a fantastic spot all along?

Some will argue that the Parking Losers didn't know. To this I reply, the writers knew! And rather than end my suffering in under a quarter minute, they dragged out their cliched excuse for advertisement for forty-five seconds. Over the course of a few weeks, that's something like fifteen minutes of my life I can never get back.

Garbage.

MSN

Although I am loathe to praise Microsoft, their recent Butterfly campaign definitely earned its place as a favorite in my book. The ads show familiar scenarios peopled with believable characters - plus someone in a comically bulbous Butterfly suit to help out. Acting as a surrogate for the MSN software, the Butterfly helps kids get permission to surf the web, helps boyfriends make up with their ladies, and negotiates better offers for car buyers.

These spots could easily have been irritating or repetitive, yet each and every one manages to get a little grin out of me.

I love this sort of advertising. No prices, no terms, just cheerful explanations of important features. MSN is depicted as a personality, a friendly figure people would love to incorporate into their lives. Introductions are always more satisfying than pitches.

Nice job, Microsoft.

Wendy's and Shatner

Wendy's has a spot out with William Shatner now and I feel like I'm missing something. They're jumping on the health fad, advertising their spinach salads. A party goer brings a bunch of these salads to a party thrown by Bill, who is puzzled at the "unofficial" status of salad man.

I think there's a punchline somewhere in there. I'm confused. And why is William Shatner advertising for Wendy's? Did he really quit doing Priceline?

This troubles me. I don't mind Wendy's, really, but I just kind of see Shatner as an A-List commercial celebrity. Airfare, yes. Salads, no.

Maybe his bills snuck up on him last year. Maybe the kids are going back to college.

Still. Bewildered.

MCI's The Neighborhood

Admittedly, I am nowhere near MCI's target audience for their Neighborhood ads. I imagine the target to be:

• Old
  
• Homeowners
  
• Dual-income households
  

Fair enough. I'm not there.

Even so, I think that MCI's Neighborhood ads are among the stupidest advertising I have ever seen. We have a bunch of disjointed shots of people doing lovey-dovey saccharine things while someone takes photos. Then we cut to some old white guys singing really old top 40 songs.

Let me digress for a moment here. I fully recognize that a good ad campaign can rocket launch the music careers of many an artist. It happened with countless Volkswagon ads, and with Mitsubishi's ads featuring a fun little tune called "Start the Commotion." When catchy but obscure songs are exposed to consumers, great things can happen.

This does not work when you force it. When you tell audiences point blank the name of the artist doing the song in your ad, they feel like they're watching a music video. Which then distracts from your product.

For MCI's ads, they intercut their pitches for The Neighborhood with pitches for the CD's of old white dudes singing covers of songs no one is interested in hearing anymore. Initially this confused me. Now it annoys me. Especially the ads where a particularly obese white guy sings classic Motown songs. That's just insulting.

MCI isn't alone in this gaffe. The other day I saw a teaser for the new Scoobie Doo movie. I won't even comment on the innate stupidity involved in that particular greenlight. This teaser was different in that rather than focus on enticing me to see their movie, they spent half their time cutting to a video from dime-a-dozen alternative rock group A Simple Plan. Again, I found this initially confusing and ultimately annoying. If I want to see remanufactured pop rubbish, I turn on MTV.

Alas, without painful banality, the shining stars of modern advertisement might not be so bright.

Allstate

Dennis Haysbert is, without question, a bad motherfucker. He's imposing, yet gentle. Firm yet pleasant. I put Haysbert's voice in my top five favorite voices. You've seen and admired Haysbert in 24. You'll also see him in Allstate's new campaign, Our Stand.

Why do I love Our Stand? Haysbert's voice. I won't pretend. Haysbert's voice is just awesome. Sells it. More than that, though, Allstate has elected not to be pushy or showy or sell-y. The ads, delivered via Haysbert with simple camera work and familiar scenery come across with a sort of understated confidence. They explain, quite simply, Allstate's stand on customer service-related policies and procedures. You can buy Allstate. Or not. Either way, they seem to know they're doing an unquestionably good job.

Or so go the ads' tacit assurances.

Fantastic.

Kyocera-Mita

Utter crap. Kyocera-Mita needs to fire their marketing department and ad agency. They've been either ineffective or downright obnoxious at least for the last year and a half.

These days, Kyocera-Mita uses an ad that depicts a company meeting where everyone is tickled to discover that their organization is migrating to K-M machines. Whoopie. I have plenty of beefs with how annoying this ad is, but let me poke a big hole in it instead.

The ad leads with a fictitious company douchebag cheerfully breaking the news.

"We're getting new printers and copiers from a company called Kyocera-Mita."

I've never been to a marketing class, but that sounds seriously ineffective. It carries that suggestion that K-M is an unknown, that they have to be introduced and explained. When someone says Canon, no one has to ask them what Canon does. K-M should be trying to inspire that same confidence in their branding.

The ad should have said

"We're getting new printers and copiers from Kyocera-Mita."

No ambiguity. No introduction. If K-M still needs to introduce itself after all this time, they're in serious trouble. K-M has allowed themselves to be represented ineptly and this is unfortunate. At least their name is getting out.

United

My current favorite TV ad is called "Interview" and pimps the comfort of United Airlines. Have a look.

The ad's a quick one, thirty seconds, but it really tells a story in such a pleasant and personal way. I'm a sucker for piano, of course, so Rhapsody in Blue biases me a bit toward Interview. This ad is engaging and very, very effective. The sleeping job candidate at the end made me want to run over to my Mac and book United the first time I saw this commercial.

There is a certain brilliance to Interview, yes, but why can't more people do good ads? Why do so many companies get by with mediocre self-representation? This is something that's always bothered me, even at a young age. Even as little seven I would see the pitiful attempts made by local advertisers and be embarassed for them.

Which means that when someone actually goes and does profoundly excellent advertising, I'm nearly orgasmic.

Kudos, United.

All aboard.

Welcome to another attempt at blogging.

This time I'm not going to indulge myself quite so much.

This time, we're gonna talk about advertising.

There is a huge volume of ads in the media today. Some of them are okay. Some of them are really, really bad. And a few, just a few, are really really good.

I'm going to talk about all of them.

I'm an advertising junkie. I love 'em. I collect 'em. I dream one day of making them. What follows is my take. I have no qualifications in terms of marketing education. I have no training beyond basic sales psychology shoved down my throat in a few retail jobs.

In short, I'm just like everybody else. Just a lot smarter and a lot more eloquent.

Welcome back.