The real questions here are when did Ronald McDonald get a daughter and how does she look like that if she routinely eats at her father's establishments?
Another set of questions: If this is a Japanese only ad, then why is she white? Does this mean Ronald McDonald lacks an Asian fetish?
How will this affect the stock values of companies that deal exclusively in the lucrative "Asian Clown Girl" pornography niche market? Should I sell off my shares before this revelation potentially crashes the market?
Okay, maybe that's enough questions for now.
Eating at McDonald's makes you skinny.
Some of the questions asked really can't be answered — and probably shouldn't have been brought up in the first place — but there is one that can be examined. Why is that woman so thin?
Well, the ad does go for sex appeal, and "fatties" — i.e. those not underweight — don't meet the Western mainstream standard of beauty. I know nothing about beauty standards in Japan, but I'd be willing to take a wild guess and say that if theirs were different before, their media mainstream has worked hard to erode those standards and replace them with ours.
Besides that, Ronald McDonald having a daughter that looks like she has an eating disorder shows us how all those "fast food is going to murder your heart and turn you into an amorphous blob" naysayers are wrong.
On YouTube the official description of this video from Doritos is:
"What happens when you bite into a bag of bold? Something crunchy and unexpected."
If by "crunchy and unexpected" the ad meant "tempt three people, including a sworn defender of the law, into committing a felony," it certainly delivered.
Just one more Dorito.
So we have a young man with his whole life ahead of him. He's keeping his head down, and he's working. He may have a bright future ahead of him. All of that changes when he tries Doritos.
Now he's stolen a car and is speeding through busy public streets without a care for anyone that he could hurt. All his work, all his time spent at community college to pull himself up from poverty, all of that is forgotten once he's had a taste of the Doritos.
All that matters now is the pursuit of more Doritos. He has to keep the high going.
And he's not alone. Others fall victim to the same trap and end up in the same boat — or car in this case — including a police officer. It just goes to show that when Doritos are concerned, anyone can be affected.
"Hey, let's make an ad comparing our product to a life-destroying, illegal drug," said one Frito-Lay employee.
"Let's show an example of how Dorito use will lead consumers inevitably to ruin!" said another.
"Great ideas, everyone. I brought in a copy of the horribly depressing drug addiction tale Requiem for a Dream so we can watch it for ideas. I especially think the ending has a lot of material we can use," said the project manager.
I'm assuming that's how the planning meeting for this ad went. It boggles my mind that someone thought this was a good idea.
Maybe they all had a few too many Doritos before that meeting.
Ah, a good ole celebrity endorsement — at least I assume that is what this is meant to be because I had no idea whom Ken Jeong was before this ad. For those who don't know Mr. Jeong, he is, as he put it, "That guy from that thing."
I guess either I'm just hopelessly out of touch with kids these days, or Miller Lite couldn't find anyone more recognizable.
Celebrity not included.
So anyway, the ad asks us to consider the following question: What would your drinking experience be like if you had an obnoxious celebrity following you around? I think Miller Lite may be on to something here but not in the way they intended. The ad seems to think that the experience would be "super fly" or "totally radical" — or whatever the young folk say nowadays — but after a couple seconds I was just wishing they would put their pet celebrity back in the box. If I was stuck with Mr. Jeong for an extended period of time I probably would take up drinking just to throw my consciousness into the blessed relief of oblivion. In that way, yeah, I could see how this hypothetical scenario could increase alcohol sales. Well played, Miller Lite. Too bad for you I can't stand beer.
Rent-A-Minority.
Besides the obnoxiousness of their spokesman, something else about this ad bothered me. Look at how the group just carts out a minority to be seen with them in public. Look at how just as quickly as they pulled him out, they throw him aside once they are free to be who they are in the dark.
This isn't a straight case of it's-cool-my-friends-are-black syndrome as Mr. Jeong is Asian, but the principle still stands.It is also an unusual case of the token minority because another minority seems to be in on the scheme. I wonder if the black group member was put back in his box too once the ad ended.
Today we examine the second foray into the advertising world by the visionary artist Filmcow, this time dealing with Biscoff Spread. All you really need to know is that peanut butter is now apparently obsolete.
It's made out of cookies!
The ad begins with a stunning revelation that shakes the very fabric of the toast and bagel industry as well as what it truly means to be human: It is made out of cookies. Much like the opening of Pandora's box, once such a discovery is made the world can never truly be the same again.
Everything is irreparably changed but in this case for the better. In the future people will look back at our time and this will be seen as the turning point in the history of human civilization. Time will be split into two eras: the dark, pre-Biscoff-spread age and the current golden age of enlightenment, where all feast on the cookie based ambrosia of the gods.
Still, not all is well in the new world. In the new global economy all non-cookie related industries are extinct. Grandmothers are enslaved and forced to work in cookie sweatshops to fulfill the growing need. The earth has been terraformed and the raw dough is strip mined from it. From there it is a small jump to terraforming other worlds to keep up with the insatiable demand, and soon it is found that the universe itself has become cookie dough on a molecular level.
Wait, scratch all that. I've just been describing Cookie Clicker.
If you've read this blog at all you may have noticed that I don't have anything nice to say about anything. This is because most things suck. Besides that, I constantly feel the need to over-analyze to an almost Freudian level, except for me everything is a thinly disguised attempt to manipulate me as opposed to just secretly being a penis.
With that in mind let's try something new for this post — and the next one too, for you perceptive few who realized that someone only puts Part 1 in the title if a Part 2 is planned. Let us shed our earthly skins and swim through the infinite void of time and space to the colorful land of imagination!
Just look at all the IMAGINATION!
In the land of IMAGINATION, ads make me totally want to buy their product. Let's take a look at an imaginary ad that is a true cultural and artistic marvel. It is an add that is so wonderful and pure it makes all the jaded and cynical naysayers prostrate themselves in the street, weeping in shame for their own wicked ways.
Look at the time and painstaking craftsmanship put into this work.
Look at the use of natural, yet insightful, dialogue meant to not only inform, but to encourage honest and intellectual discussion.
Look at how Filmcow elevates a mere video advertisement to an artistic masterpiece that is easily on par with Michelangelo's David or the Mona Lisa.
Look upon it and despair for you shall never see another like it. Your life meant nothing up to this point and now that this moment has passed it is truly all down hill from here.
Today we’re looking at an advertisement from Burlington
Coat Factory that espouses the virtues of style. You can thank — or blame, depending on whether or not you like this post — the
lovely and talented Alnycea
Blackwell for suggesting it.
The ad begins with a man confidently, maybe even
triumphantly, declaring that people like his vibes.
I’m not entirely sure what
that means or how he came to such a conclusion. Such a declaration was
certainly shocking to the man engaged in cleaning his car; note his confused
reaction to the announcement. Perhaps the Vibe-master — who I
will refer to as such because of his self-identified mastery of all things vibe
related — is just a narcissist.
That leads us to ad’s second act. It is here the
plot thickens, and we can truly begin to appreciate the potentially dangerous
game Burlington Coat Factory has invited us to play, where the stakes are no
less than the very heart and soul of American society.
What does it mean to
go and get?
What exactly do you go and get, Go-getter? Are you saying
you go and get mass produced clothing in order to make yourself feel unique — and then you bring it back? Are you comparing yourself to a
dog playing fetch? Or are you perhaps referring to the cyclic nature of life, in
that you always go out to get yet always return to where you once were? Hell is
repetition, they say.
Perhaps this is a commentary on thoughtless ambition and the
insatiable lust for “success.” You leave behind everything else in your life
until eventually you return with your prize — the prize
you spent so long dreaming of and scheming for — only to
find that you were wrong in thinking it would bring happiness. You let your
ambition become not the means to an end, but the end itself. Now you have your
warm coat, but it does little to alleviate the deathly chill that holds sway
over your soul.
The ad further reinforces this interpretation by injecting
the ultimate irony: Go-getter, you sought out your heavy coat, but now it
doesn’t look that cold out. It was all for nothing. All that time spent is gone.
Wasted.
You are truly alone now, sitting on a bench crying out to an
uncaring and alienated world to justify your actions. I wonder whom you are
truly trying to convince, Go-getter; the world or yourself? You have all you
ever wanted, but it brings you no joy. You feel uncomfortably warm now, in fact.
Putting out such a message required incredible courage from
Burlington Coat Factory. Imagine it from their perspective: You are sickened by
the consumer and status driven culture that supports you, yet speaking out to
change it could destroy your very foundation. Would you have the moral courage
and selflessness required to do what you felt was right for society, regardless
of personal and professional cost?
Nah, I’m just messing
with you.
Burlington Coat Factory doesn’t care about you, society, or
anything that isn’t money.
“I buy mass produced clothing because a company tells me it
will make me unique,” is what Go-getter is really saying.
Style, not substance.
In the final act the entire ad comes together, and the
meaning becomes apparent. We are bluntly told that style is all that matters.
Style is everything and as such there is no room for substance.
Perhaps Vibe-master himself is meant to represent Burlington
Coat Factory, with his smug and self-assured narcissism. Of course everyone
loves and accepts his vibes, and here we can equate “vibes” with “values.” We, the public, are obviously meant to play
the role of the misguided Go-getter, one who doesn’t question her vibe loyalties
and simply goes out and gets like she is supposed to.
But perhaps Burlington Coat Factory underestimated us.
I feel more kinship with the menial worker, the man who
stopped what he was doing at Vibe-master’s boast and began to turn — perhaps to say that whether or not he liked the vibes was his
choice, not Vibe-master’s — when he was cut off and replaced with Go-getter.
Every individual is free to choose their own
vibes to like, whether you like it or not, Burlington Coat Factory.
And that’s why I probably won’t buy your
product — unless I’m really cold and happen to be right next to one of your
stores or something.
Have you ever been on Google and found yourself thinking, "man, screw critical reasoning and free will; who needs that?" No? Yeah, I figured as much. But the good news that if you have, Bing has you covered.
For those not in the know, Bing is a search engine much like Google. The main difference between them is that Bing seems to be designed for some sort of alternate dimension dystopian 2013. If you've seen Back to the Future Part II, think of the 1985 where Biff owned a casino and was married to Marty's mom — except 28 years later, obviously.
In the Bing timeline, society realized the true perils of giving people too much time to think and make their own decisions. It was chaos, and out of the ashes of the old world came the new order: Don't think, just obey.
I guess the real question here is how Bing even made it to our timeline. Oh well, let's not think too hard about that and just go with it — right Bing?
No thought needed here.
That about sums up the ad’s message. You don't need to think or make decisions, because someone else can just do that for you. Thinking and deciding for yourself will inevitably lead to failure, so why bother? I’m sure quite a few powerful
people and/or corporations wish the Bing dystopia was a reality.
"Don't think, just obey."
"Don't think, just consume."
"Don't think, just be content."
It certainly would make things easier, wouldn’t it? And not
just for the high and mighty, but for all the rest of us too. Choices are
difficult to make. Wouldn’t it just be better if you were free from choice and
just had the freedom to obey? Freedom
is Slavery — and Slavery is Freedom — after all.
Freedom.
I came into this post thinking I was sickened by Bing and its premise, but I was wrong. It showed me the errors of my thought process — mostly that I had a thought process. Now I know better. I don't want to have to think about things or make my own choices. And you know what? It's such a relief.
“O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O
stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears
trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right,
the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big
Brother Bing.” – 1984
From this moment on, whenever I want to search something I'll use Bing to get to Google.
"What Mess?"
Everywhere we see pristine, sparkling white. Even the woman is no exception. Everything is right with the world — or is it? Suddenly, she starts to trip! Oh no, anything but a horrible dark stain on our picture of perfect whiteness! But wait, is that a bottle of floor cleaner?
I'll cut to the end of this dramatic narrative: Super Pell saves the day.
So today we have a 2012 ad for Super Pell, a floor cleaner that seems to be exclusive to Indonesia. You can thank Ads of the World for bringing this to my attention.
If there was a mess, who would clean it?
Probably not a rich white woman, especially in Indonesia. The ad was close though. That aside, I find the choice of model here interesting for a couple reasons.
We have a rich, perhaps professional, young woman. She's pristine, like her house. And we're supposed to believe that if something got spilled, she would obviously be the one to handle it. Why? Well, she is a woman isn't she?
The subtext here seems to be, "No matter how far you climb, you will always be bound to scrub a man's floors." Thanks for that insight, Super Pell.
Anything but brown!
Then there's the fact that this is an Indonesian product and the ad agency decided to use a white woman. In fact everything is white and perfect, and that's just the way it should be says Super Pell.
Note that the main antagonist here is coffee, a decidedly non-white substance. And this ad is aimed at a decidedly non-white population, one that would look a bit more like that dreaded, prevented stain than those lovely white floors.
So white and all that goes along with it is good. The native brown... not so much. A case of cultural imperialism? You decide.
Buy the product and be more white.
The ad seems to say to people in Indonesia that their way is the wrong way. If you want to be successful like this white woman, you need to be more white. Super Pell can help you there, and you'll start feeling bad for being who you are before you know it.
Using Super Pell will also bring some class to your one room shanty or whatever you non-whites live in, the ad seems to say. You want to be like that woman up there, don't you?
Would I buy it if I could?
Even if Super Pell was readily available to me — and I actually cleaned things — I wouldn't buy it. Perhaps I'm just looking too far into it, but the subtext I see is just too over-the-top offensive. I wonder if it was intended to be that way.
This ad came out for Levi's in 2009, but I never saw it in an actual consumer publication. I was reading my marketing book last week when suddenly I saw this and did a double take.
"Wait, why is there a picture of public masturbation in my textbook?"
A second glance told me I had been mistaken, but it certainly got me to stop and look. I can't help but feel that was what the ad agency was hoping for.
For trendy and empowered young women.
A good way to identify an ad's target audience is to look at the person you see in the ad. In this case, a young white woman, perhaps one with aspirations of leaving her small time life to make it big in the city. Maybe she wants to be an artist, or maybe she just wants to be in control of her own life.
The way she's standing with her hand almost in an interesting position, her lack of concern about the way her shirt is coming up, and that expression she has say a lot. Those things say that she's not afraid to express her sexuality, not ashamed to say who she wants to unbutton. She's sexually liberated and empowered, and you just have to deal with that.
But that's not all the ad says.
Also for trendy young men who would like to unbutton trendy and empowered young women.
I can't be the only one who thought she was masturbating at first glance. But then I read the text next to her and realized she was an independent and empowered woman. Why is that text in such a hard to read font?
When I stopped to consider this, the sheer audacity of it impressed me.On one hand, we have a sexy, sexually liberated young woman who is not afraid to say what she wants. On the other, we have a sexy young woman presented as meat. And they are the exact same picture. Why is the text about her sexual empowerment so hard to read again?
So what is being promised?
If you're a young woman, the ad offers you quite a bit:
Buying Levi's will empower you.
Buying Levi's will make you sexy.
Buying Levi's might even help you escape your small town life and make it in the city.
If you're a young man you can still get quite a bit from Levi's products, like young women to unbutton. Or young women who want to unbutton you. I guarantee you the latte boy was wearing Levi's. Feel like buying some jeans now? No, but maybe I'm the wrong person to ask. I'm not hip. I'm not trendy. I don't know what clothing brands I wear or am currently wearing. Most importantly, I know young women will have no interest in unbuttoning me regardless of what I'm wearing. Sorry Levi's, you're talking to the wrong person here. That aside, I can see why the promises made could be appealing. Who doesn't want to feel empowered and in control of their life or get laid?
What is "Why I Probably Won't Buy Your Product "about?
Short Answer: Ad critiques.
Long Answer: To analyze ads to see whom they are aimed at, what they promise, and how well they work.
Why do ad critiques?
It's all about trying to be more aware of what influences you.
Most of the time when people see advertising they scoff and look pityingly at all those poor fools who were affected while they were not. The problem with that mentality is that most people probably were affected in some way, and pretending that you weren't just means you're less prepared to recognize how and why you were influenced.
Analyzing what an ad is actually telling you can help to make you a more active consumer, as opposed to someone who is simply acted upon by the media. Analyzing what messages work and don't work on you and why can help you realize just what forms of persuasion — or manipulation, depending on how you look at it — you are especially susceptible to.
