Some observations on advertising

Some observations on advertising

Neal Boortz
July 13, 2012

While I was preparing these notes this morning I saw a Sandals ad on TV. Sandals resorts are those all-inclusive resorts around the Caribbean. You’ve seen the ads .. but have you really looked at the people IN those ads? I sure hope you have. The agency that shot the ads went to great lengths to make you believe something that ain’t necessarily true …. Every single one of the people in those ads have almost perfect bodies. No paunches on the men, and every woman has a flat stomach, great legs and a set of fun bags do die for. There is – at least I think I saw --- one older couple in the ad, but they, too, had perfect bodies. The goal here is to make you believe that once you step onto the Sandals property this is what you will see – perfect beauty everywhere.



Now .. let’s move to printed advertisements for top of the line luxury hotels. Here, too, you will see beautiful, perfect women. But recently I noticed something. There’s the ad for the hotel – and there’s the perfect woman in beautiful clothes draped in stunning jewelry standing next to her luggage in the lobby. Oh … did I mention the woman was dripping in jewelry? Yeah .. except for one thing. No wedding ring. The picture is clearly aimed at business travelers, most of who are men. There she is guys – a beautiful and desirable young woman just checking into the hotel! And … she’s not married! This could be quite the happy hunting ground for you!

And then there’s the car commercials. I’ve been making this observation for years. Some commercials for cars are loud and obnoxious, the announcer is virtually screaming at you, and you hear crashes, loud music, and even explosions in the background. Other commercials feature the calmer voice of a more professional announcer without the explosions and amazingly loud music. The loud obnoxious commercials are always for the less-expensive cars. The less offensive the commercial, the more expensive the car. That brings us to affordability. There are all sorts of reasons to buy a lower-priced car. The ad agencies believe that you are in the market for the cheaper car simply because you can’t afford the more expensive one – and they believe that this is because you simply aren’t educated to the point that your income is high enough to buy the car you really want. So … the louder the commercial, the dumber they think you are.

And then there’s the racial political correctness you see in ads all the time. Remember those ads for Brinks Home Security? Brinks later became Broadview, and Broadview is now ADT ….. but anyway, Brinks ran a series of ads with the same theme. A woman or a young girl was home alone, and someone was breaking in. The woman pushed the Brinks button and in less than 1.5 seconds she was talking to the Brinks dude on the phone and the cops were on the way. But --- did you notice that in every single one of these commercials the guy breaking into the home was white? Always white. Now you know the statistics as well as I do --- and white people are simply not the only ones breaking into homes, especially in urban areas. The story, of course, is that Brinks was scared to death to show a black guy breaking into a home, because that would be raaaaaaaaacist … and prooooooooofiling. Make the white folks the bad guys. They’re not the ones with a racial chip on their shoulders … so it’s safe.

Also .. in the arena of racially politically correct advertising … you do know that there is some sort of an unwritten law that you can only have so many white people in a TV spot without adding in a minority. One of the most absurd examples is a commercial – I have no idea what they’re advertising – featuring two adults in the front of a car and a bunch of kids in the back. The kids suddenly erupt into their cover version of some song. I guess the critical white mass was reached in the back of that car, because one of the kids is black. The viewer is left wondering whether or not he might have been abducted.

Now wasn’t all of that deliciously insensitive?

I really love this stuff … and I can keep this up even after my show is over!