Aap! - Alternative Advertising Possibilities

 I enjoyed this response and replying to it, so I wanted to put it in a more prolific location than hidden under comments.

“So why don’t I feel bad about what we do? Because we’re in the business of deploying new canvases upon which the great minds of advertising will actualize visions and concepts so cool, you’re not even going to care it’s an ad.�

Dunno if I totally agree…any half-hour of broadcast TV will confirm that there’s a lot more dreck than there are cool visions.

This whole business is corporate “fluffing� more than anything, is it not? In the end, the client/pornstar may look good, but I feel I need a bath.

“Traditional advertising spaces have become a mass market commodity, and consequently, their effectiveness has waned and their market value dropped.  With lower expectations and lower investment, there is little pressure to create a great campaign.  End result: we’re inundated with boring, cliché, and sometimes insulting-to-our-intelligence adverts.”

Dating back to the advent of VCRs, and especially now with the growing adoption and integration of DVR technology into set-top satellite and cable boxes, TV spots are watched less and less. 

Who’s going to engage top-tier creative for something that is not going to be seen by half the demographic?

Here’s my theory: DVRs are still a luxury item, owned and used primarily by those with money to burn.  Knowing that this valuable segment has tuned out, advertisers have stopped caring.  They advertise now not out of desire to influence or affect, but rather out of habit.

Result: “dreck”

Let’s remember though the exception to this rule: the Super Bowl.  It’s often said that half the viewers of the Super Bowl tune in not for the game, but the commercials.  Advertisers, knowing this, engage six-figure, top-tier, dazzlingly brilliant creative.

Result: “cool visions”

Effort goes where it is going to have the most effect.

As I sit here and ponder my response to the likening of our business to the set of a porn shoot, and with my musings on the decline of television advertising fresh in my mind, I can think of but one thing:

Guys Gone Wild.

I just saw a TV spot for this the other week, and I scoffed out loud.

I mean, first of all, I cannot believe they are able to advertise this the way they do on television.  Sure it’s only on past midnight, but it’s on relatively mainstream channels.  It has been the case where I am watching the History Channel, a somber documentary on the ongoing suffering of reservation-dwelling Native Americans, and suddenly a Carribean drum beat comes on and a sleazy voice demands “DO YOU WANT TO SEE HOT TEEN GUYS AT THEIR MOST UNINHIBITED”. 

I’m all for sex, drugs, and violence on TV, and some of my best friends are homosexual, but the way this message was delivered, I got a heaping case of the heebie jeebies.

Secondly, I cannot believe the success of Girls Gone Wild.  I honestly believe it may be the most successful DVD series in the history of mankind.  It’s so successful that the creator started with a couple bucks in his pocket and a HandiCam, and now he is a billionaire.  It’s so successful that Snoop Dogg guest starred.  It’s so successful that there is now Guys Gone Wild.

I can’t tell you how much I fear who/what is next to have Gone Wild.

Now that the filibuster segment of this posting is over, I will respond the allegation that we are but corporate “fluffers”, or maybe “shills.”

So here’s the deal: Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of this great country that we call the home of the ____ Gone Wild series, in 1789 famously said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”  That may have been true of the world in 1789, but we live in the world of 2006.  The world of 2006 is one of intense, global competition; a world of more consumer choice than any other era of human history has ever fathomed.  There’s a new certainty: advertising.  And it’s only going to get more ubiquitous and more frequent as advertising markets expand to accommodate the influx of competition from emerging economic powerhouses like China and India.

Like it or not, advertising is here not just to stay, but to grow.  Advertising is an integral cog of the complex system that is capitalism, and its growth is a reflection of the adoption of capitalism in formerly less-than-capitalistic nations.  And aside from Guys Gone Wild, it’s really not a bad thing.

Philosophically speaking, I think you can affect change in the world through two divergent approaches.  You can be a martyr for a doomed case and hopefully be looked back on as inspiration, as opposed to roadkill, or you can stay on the winning side and affect change.

Nobody’s going to eliminate advertising from our daily life, nobody’s even going to reduce it.  Sure, by staying on the side that is putting advertising out on the street we are inevitably “fluffingâ€? by helping companies put their best foot forward.  That concept doesn’t make me feel dirty in the least; I mean we’re all out there looking, acting, and making ourselves out to be better than we really are.  Why shouldn’t companies do the same?  But by being a part of this process, I feel we are in prime position to improve the situation for consumers at large: by only involving ourselves in advertising concepts that are novel and innovative, we’re going to make it a whole lot more enjoyable.

Check your TiVo for Aap! Gone Wild.