Archive for the 'Flattery' Category
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Money for Nothing
Adweek is profiling what it calls “new model agencies.” Dig the poozers below, featured there today.
The latest hipster band? Aspiring novelists? Nope, the “cool” and “creative” mini-capitalists behind such stunningly important work as the Dr Pepper Social Program. Click the picture to see their amazing genius on display.
You have to hand it to these two yankers. Clearly, they’ve sensed that corporate marketers themselves love to be flattered as they “award” out their button-pushing assignments. Hence, the pomo-nerd “Code & Theory” moniker and the pseudo-intellectual/bored-ecstasy-dealer presentments.
All in the name of tricking the kids into becoming “fans” of a brand of soda-pop on the world’s biggest marketing data-harvesting engine, of course.
Such are the priorities and things that are cool in early 21st century America…
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
The (Further) Demise of Content
Leslie Savan, TCT‘s favorite advertising critic, once wrote that, if you want to understand advertisements, one of the major principles to bear in mind is “follow the flattery.” Ego strokes are often used to build brand affection and loyalty.
Of course, as we TCTers know, marketing is a core part of the overall corporate capitalist order, and, as such, faces constant pressure to refine and extend itself.
Hence, is it any surprise that the premium on flattery is devouring more and more of the “content” (aka programming, aka “shows”) in commercial media? Content, after all, is merely secondary advertising, something that exists to attract eyeballs and eardrums to advertising/marketing (aka unintentional shopping).
Exhibit A: The new television program “Up All Night,” the plot of which is: two new, first-time parents attempt to care for their baby, with supposedly inherently hilarious results. Is it funny, or just an attempt at flattery? Judge for yourself:
Exhibit B: The new motion picture, “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” the plot of which is: a woman holds down an upper class “job,” while also trying to be a wife and mother. This one is also a load of undisguised, straight-up button-pushing. It is, in Tasha Robinson‘s apt phrase, lifestyle porn:
Such is American culture these (late) days. Hilarious, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, for those of you wondering how Hollywood movies serve as marketing vehicles, two words: product placement. “I Don’t Know How She Does It” features not one, but two Product Placement Coordinators (look under “Other Crew”). During its filming, one product placement expert described it thus:
Sarah Jessica Parker leaves her character of bad girl from New York upper class to become a London City broker. In this case she is even a mother and has to conciliate these two roles. The comedy is based on the best-seller by Allison Pearson, who will be out in February with her second novel “I think I love you”….The shootings will begin in London in January. A product placement fit for high fashion Companies, accessories, and baby products. A rare occasion for products for kids; the premises fo this movie seems to be in fact really good.
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Scratch a Hipster…
…find an advertiser.
Per Ad Week:
Gavin McInnes doesn’t care about your product. This would be all well and good if the co-founder of Vice magazine—that bible of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, N.Y., hipsterdom—hadn’t gone and rebranded himself as an adman. But with Rooster, the four-person shop where he is creative director, McInnes has morphed into just that. Housed in a one-room office in SoHo, New York, within spitting distance of major agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and Euro RSCG, Rooster produces gonzo comedy clips (think Jackass meets Banksy) that happen to be branded.
McInnes’ selling strategy? Advertising that strikes a pose of not being advertising. The reality? McInnes is just another whore tricking people into paying attention to things they don’t want to spend their time on:
[I]t’s a new way to advertise. People are dubious. People are sick of ads. When we did the Vans shoot, we didn’t brand it. And someone in the comments goes, “This better not be a fuckin’ ad for Vans.” People hate ads.
So, McInnes is even more of a liar than your standard marketing operative. Quite an achievement, and very hip, no?
What a culture. Ironic lying for overpriced tennis shoes.
Monday, August 16th, 2010
Golf, Flattery, Ideology
If you are a student of corporate capitalism, I recommend occasionally summoning the will-power to watch some golf, tennis, or Triple Crown horse racing on television. There, you will find important evidence of how our overclass perceives and flatters itself.
Consider this ad, which is currently running during golf tournaments:
Here you see supply-side ideology as it operates at the personal level, complete with a white guy performing manual labor on a farm, no less!
Leslie Savan, where are you when we need you?
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Amen, Manuel!
Manuel Garcia, Jr. has published an excellent essay on the logic of corporate capitalist political marketing. Read it here.
Garcia’s overall thesis is this:
The social programming language of capitalist authoritarianism seeks to activate personal greed, intellectual insecurity and visceral racism as motivators of guided popular political reaction. The Pavlovian logic to this scheme of social manipulation is that all human beings are possessive, gullible and fearful.
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Genesis of the Piss Pad
Apparently, Whoopi Goldberg is now helping the Kimberly-Clark corporation turn more old growth forests into profits and landfill. According to Advertising Age, Goldberg is peddling piss-pads, a.k.a. “light incontinence products” called Poise, on behalf of K-C.
How did K-C’s bold entrepreneurs invent this wondrous advance in human welfare?
In the usual manner.
First, massive layoffs:
The need to reach the target market with a different type of absorbent-underwear product came out during research with women in focus groups. The introduction comes a couple of weeks after Thomas J. Falk, the chief executive of Kimberly-Clark, announced a reorganization that included the closing of 20 plants and the dismissal of about 10 percent, or 6,000, of the worldwide work force.
Mr. Falk said the reorganization was intended to free money to invest in areas like new products, research into consumer behavior and marketing campaigns.
The principal Kimberly-Clark competitor, Procter & Gamble, has been thriving of late by following just such a path, generating additional consumer interest in otherwise staid product categories with continual rounds of “news” in the form of new products under familiar brand names like Bounty, Charmin and Mr. Clean along with new brands like Febreze and Swiffer.
Next, use of focus groups to find a weakness:
And the reason they don’t want to talk about it is that they associate it, even the young women, with aged incontinence. They immediately say, “Holy cow, I’m doing to be in Depends tomorrow.’ And that’s like one foot in the grave to them.”
K-C also makes Depend, but it’s not for light bladder leakage, which also has many causes besides age.
Women are more likely to have the condition, Mr. Meurer said, if they’ve had hysterectomies or multiple children, if they’re heavier or if they’re athletes, particularly runners and tennis players.
“The marketing task is how do we move [Poise] out of the aged incontinence [mind-set]?” Mr. Meurer said. Realistically, he’s also trying to move it out of the adult incontinence sections of stores, where it sits alongside canes, Depends and orthopedic support products, and instead adjacent to feminine-care products, with K-C has already succeeded in doing at about half of U.S. Stores. [Ad Age, February 10, 2010]
Finally, big spending from the layoff savings/production speed-up, to flatter and manipulate the “targets” into buying more paper underpants:
The idea of an active lifestyle is played up in the ads.
For instance, a print ad proclaims: “This body can follow the beat. Lead the race. Move chairs, sofas. Mountains, too.” A television commercial declares: “It’s wonderful what your body can do if you’ve a mind to let it. Even bladder weakness just takes a bit of Poise.”
The commercial presents a man and woman in their 40′s or 50′s at home, in a romantic dance. At one point, his hand lingers over her derrière – implying that although she is wearing a Poise panty, it is sheer enough to elude detection.
“We wanted to make it a little sexy,” said Terril Smith, a creative director at Ogilvy New York who was the art director on the campaign, working with Alice Whitmore, creative director and copywriter.
“We’re saying: ‘You shouldn’t have to lose the intimacy. It’s discreet enough that he can have his hand on your back. You can still be as active as you want to be,’ ” Ms. Smith said. “People are keeping more active and are wanting to feel they can do more things longer.”
Mr. Meurer didn’t disclose spending, but said the campaign represents by far the biggest marketing outlay in Poise’s 14-year history, and will be worth the spending if the brand can dramatically change the nature — or lack — of conversation about the problem it addresses.
