Axe ads have traditionally been about products that instantly turn women into lust-crazed vixens bent on coupling with Axe-wearing gents as quickly as possible. But in the first ad for the new fragrance Twist, a robot makes over the guy repeatedly during the course of a date in which the woman appears acutely interested only at the end. The ad is based on a concept co-created by consumers and ad agency Ponce (in late 2008, the agency was renamed Ponce Buenos Aires after Fernando Vega Olmos left to work on Unilever at JWT).

“Women get bored easily,” notes a version of the ad for Axe sibling Lynx in the U.K., which touts a “fragrance that changes.”

The reality, said David Cousino, global director of consumer and marketing insights at Unilever, is that all fragrances change, starting with a fresh, strong, usually citrusy top note that lasts for as long as an hour and aims to help cover the smell of alcohol-based propellants as they evaporate, progressing to a generally richer, milder mid-note and a longer-lasting and often subtler-still “dry-down” note. This is all old hat to fragrance developers and marketers, he said, but it was new and fascinating to the consumers in the development group.

“The guys linked that to the mating game and how guys are feeling that they need to constantly change and evolve to keep the girls interested,” Mr. Cousino said.

“Women get bored easily”?  Really?  In the 21st century, big businesses are still getting away with this?

And people wonder about the cultural impact of corporate marketing?

Ad Age describes the anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-love, anti-real-family nature of the ad:

The organization’s ad will feature college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, sharing a personal story centered on the theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” according to a news release from Focus on the Family.

Not only do I look forward to hating whatever NFL team gets stuck with the odious peckerwood Tebow, but I commend this ad to those interested in the competing analyses of which side of the spectrum is shut out of the corporate media, and which is not, despite its fact-free, flak-providing bleats about “the liberal media” (meaning “the leftist media”).

Ad Age, of course, relays the preposterous claim that FOTF’s “Super Bowl commercial is not polarizing and does not take an ‘anti’ stance against any issue.”

Sure.  And all the other ads, for each of which which CBS collects between $5,000,000 and $5,600,000 per minute (one wonders: WWJDWFMD?), are merely there to provide information, not mind-injections, to citizens.

This particular one here is Mr. Dr. Professor Sam Gosling, the newest member of the team at Mindset Media.  Mindset is a new arm of the renowned commercial spy agency, The Nielsen Company.  Nielsen, of course, has a long history of helping corporate sales engineers use demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data to create “lucrative customer relationships.”

Among Professor Gosling’s publicly-sponsored research endeavors is work in “animal personality.”

As I explained in The Consumer Trap book, big business marketers not only view their targets as means to an end (as “consumers” of their firms’ wares), but as so many Pavlovian beasts.

To corporate planners, we product users are much more manipulable and profitable when we are in the cognitive modes we share with frogs, dogs, chickens, and other sub-human species.

The great fear of big business marketers is that we might become humanly (and perhaps even humanely) conscious of the links between our life-environments,  our natural proclivities, and our behaviors.  We might see their hand on the lever, in other words.  Hence, much of big business marketing comprises an effort to keep us down amongst the squirrels and fishes and lemmings in our triune brains.

So, along comes Dr. Gosling.  What can he add to the ever-expanding art and science of for-profit behavior engineering?

Animal models are useful because they permit experimental studies of personality that would not be possible in humans. The first stage of our research program is to appraise the viability of assessing personality in non-human animals. The second stage is to develop appropriate assessment methods. The third stage is to implement the findings of Stages 1 and 2 to address questions in personality, social, and health psychology.

Golly, he forgot to mention commercial questions, didn’t he?

On the face of it, this kind of research sounds oh so amusing, and maybe even liberating.  But, really, despite the kudos from the major purveyors of pseudo-sociology, what democratic or life-enhancing purpose could this stuff possibly serve?  Who would ever care about gaining super-precise understandings of how humans share psychological reactions with the less-conscious animals?  The one obvious answer is:  our overclass of market-totalitarian behavioral dictators.

So, is our ebullient, supposedly life- and animal-loving scientist troubled by this (often unmentioned) implication?

Hardly:

‘Personality science has a big role to play in ad targeting, and Mindset Media is at the forefront of the field, forging links between science and practical applications in real-world marketing contexts’ said Gosling. ‘Their approach is truly unique, and I believe it will soon have a big impact on how companies identify their audiences precisely and reach them efficiently.’

I don’t know about you, but the animal in me says “Grrrrr!” to that.

The truth, of course, is that what Honda is really testing is how effectively they can convert people’s petty vanity and sheer programmability into still more irrational brand loyalty.

Have people been falling into this trap?

The results thus far have blown away Mr. Peyton, who felt at the campaign’s onset that “If we got a million connections, that would be cool.” He called the push “a pretty powerful piece of advertising because people are buying into it and we aren’t giving anything away.”

Honda initially supported the site with a sprinkling of ads on Facebook. “It wasn’t a big media buy, but it got a lot of attention,” said Tom Peyton, senior manager-national advertising. Earlier this month, TV was added to the mix, with 15- and 30-second spots featuring actual owners. The commercials were created by Honda’s longtime agency, independent RPA, Santa Monica, which developed the concept. The buy, also handled by RPA, encompasses prime-time programming such as “30 Rock,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Dancing With the Stars” and NFL football.

The campaign got a huge boost after a one-day targeted homepage takeover Oct. 19 on high-reach sites, including ESPN.com, CNN.com and SportsYahoo.com. That more than doubled the number of Facebook fans into the range of 1.7 million. (As of press time Oct. 22, the number had topped 2 million).

Footnote: As of this morning, the number of victims of this campaign is approaching 2.5 million.

Something milder than that has happened in Britain, according to Advertising Age. There, the Advertising Standards Authority (an unthinkable institutional possibility here in the USA, of course) has told Coke it can’t run its normal ads for Vitamin Water, due to their blatant, exploitative falsity (which, of course, is the same thing as the brand’s very purpose and plan).

The news there, though, is more about the shameless, laughable lies Coke presented in its losing attempt at self-defense. As reported by Ad Age:

One poster was headlined “More muscles than brussels.” The complaints challenged the implication that the drink’s health benefits made it equivalent to eating brussels sprouts — a popular U.K. winter vegetable. Coca-Cola claimed that the phrase was instead a reference to former action-movie star Jean Claude Van Damme, who is commonly labeled the “Muscles from Brussels,” referring to his origins in the Belgian city.

Another ad claimed, “Keep perky when you’re feeling murky.” It jokingly advised consumers that if you drink Glaceau Vitaminwater you won’t have to waste your sick days on real illness, and can use them instead “to just, erm, not go in.” Coca-Cola insisted that the “perky” claim was about mood rather than health, and that it did not imply that the drink could prevent illness.

The ASA also received complaints that the ads promoted the range of drinks as healthy, when in fact they contain high levels of sugar. Coca-Cola’s defense was that the products are clearly labeled, and that 7.5 grams of sugar in 100 milliliters is not a “high sugar” content. However, the ASA upheld the complaints because the sugar contained in one Glaceau Vitaminwater represents 26% of an adult’s recommended daily sugar allowance.

It would make an excellent project to study the course of other corporate defenses to ASA charges. These speak volumes about the depth of dishonesty and contempt at the very heart of big business marketing.

Some smart Germans have launched this website, which heartily deserves imitation here in the epicenter of market totalitarianism and cartooned reality.  [Auf Deutsch hier.]

Anybody got any starter photos?  We could do some of this right here at TCT…

Viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices — the Three Screens — continues to increase and has hit record levels.  Nielsen’s fourth quarter A2/M2 Three Screen Report reports that the average American watches more than 151 hours of TV per month, an all-time high.  They are also watching several hours of video on other devices: those who watch it on the Internet consume another 3 hours of online video per month, and those who use mobile video watch nearly 4 hours per month on mobile phones and other devices.

This un-discussed deepening addiction, a cardinal aim, requirement, and symptom of core-country corporate capitalism/market totalitarianism, also explains why most Obama voters haven’t begun to realize how massively and completely baited-and-switched they’ve been.

I think of it as “life behind screens,” or “bubble life.”

It — experiencing life predominantly through video screens, work sconces, and automobile glass — is not just part-and-parcel of corporate capitalism, but perhaps its #1 intention and requirement vis-a-vis the organization of the lives of the masses.

The latest bubble life news confirms, in spades, that the private automobile may be, as Plan C author Pat Murphy posits, “the greatest creator of alienation between humans that has ever existed.”

To wit, some excellent reportage from a July 18 New York Times story:

Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.

A 2003 Harvard study estimated that cellphone distractions caused 2,600 traffic deaths every year, and 330,000 accidents that result in moderate or severe injuries.

Yet Americans have largely ignored that research. Instead, they increasingly use phones, navigation devices and even laptops to turn their cars into mobile offices, chat rooms and entertainment centers, making roads more dangerous.

A disconnect between perception and reality worsens the problem. New studies show that drivers overestimate their own ability to safely multitask, even as they worry about the dangers of others doing it.

I’ll let the excellent CARtoonist Andy Singer have the last “word” on this totally unsurprising phenomenon:

To see a textbook case of both commodity fetishism and the general sickness of corporate capitalism, keep an eye out for Procter & Gamble’s appalling “Feel More” marketing campaign on behalf of its Downy fabric softener brand.

The ads and promotions emerging from P & G’s campaign encourage people to interpret use of this trivial-at-best, ecologically inexcusable, and probably toxicologically dangerous product as an expression of and gateway to their deepest bonds and emotions.

Equally sick and preposterous is the campaign’s further suggestion that “fabric softener” is some kind of defense against the heightening ravages of the very investors-first system that foists this Earth- and health-endangering shit on us.

“With all the uncertainty around us today, it’s more important than ever for each of us to take solace and find pleasure in the simple things in life. Consumers have really resonated with our message,” said Marty Vanderstelt, brand manager for Downy North America.

You have to worry about the future of a culture in which the dominant behavioral influencers scientifically study ways to convince people that dumping chloroform, pentance, benzyl acetate, and dipalmitoylethyl hydroxyethylmonium methosulfate in your heated appliances and on your clothes is one of “the simple things in life.”