Ad Hoc
The power of advertising is a remarkable thing. I may be the only person in the world that is affected like this, but every time I smell diesel exhaust I think of Bays English Muffins. Now before you go breaking out the net and tranquilizer gun, let me assure you that I have papers signed by board certified medical professionals that allows me unrestricted access to the world at large, unrestrained and for the most part un-medicated. This mental oddity is actually quite explainable.
As a child I grew up in Chicago. Chicago is a city with a fairly widespread mass transit system which includes elevated trains, subways and buses. The downtown area of Chicago is known as the Loop because if you look at a map of the elevated train system is makes a loop around it. Buses run up and down the main streets of the city stopping at almost every corner to load and unload passengers. As a very young kid the buses were electric with a large metal frame on their roof that rose up to ride along power cables that were strung down the middle of the street. It was not unusual to see the bus come to a traffic halting stop because this framework had jumped off the power cable leaving the bus deader than Amy Winehouse’s eyes. The bus driver would have to get out carrying a long pole that he used to reinsert the power cable back into contact with the frame. It was no wonder that the city replaced these buses with ones powered by good old fashioned stinky diesel engines. As is the case in many cities, the buses carried advertisements on their side and on the back. For some reason, it seemed as though every bus in the entire city had a large poster on the back advertising Bays English Muffins. There I was, the young husky boy, standing on the sidewalk as the bus would pull away farting an unhealthy dose of diesel exhaust in my face and the only thing I saw was Bay English Muffins. Suffice it to say that I have not been a kid for a very long time but this association has stuck with me all these years. A pretty strong subliminal endorsement, but probably not what the Bays marketing folks were going for.
Outside of Super Bowl Sunday most advertising is as forgettable as a Pauly Shore movie, but usually not as painful. It seems that they are created by clueless head bobbers that sit around and agree with other all day and then pitched to, and approved by, corporate executives that already like the product being advertised. If anything, most of the ads I see make me want to never buy that product again in retaliation for inflicting this 30 seconds of mind numbing stupidity on me. I’d like to let the folks at Pepto Bismol know that I would rather puke on my shoes and crap my pants than support their brain dead ad campaign with people off the street auditioning by holding their ass and signing about diarrhea. But each generation has a few of their own fondly memorable ad campaigns.
For me a Wendy’s commercial from probably 30 years ago comes to mind. While everybody seems to remember the “Where’s the beef” commercials, the one that makes me laugh to this day concerned a fashion show in the old USSR. A very masculine looking female the size of a Volvo panel truck would strut down the runway in the same outfit simply bringing with her different props. Another bruiser of a woman with a heavy fake Russian accent would announce “Svim vare. Itz nice.” While the model held a beach ball. Then in the same outfit she would walk down the runway scanning a flashlight with the announcer saying “EEEEEvnink vare. Itz nice.” It was Wendy’s attempt to differentiate themselves from the other burger guys by offering something different, rather than the same old thing with a few new toppings. That type of ad would be way too politically incorrect for today, but damn it was funny. More recently the Chevy truck commercials with the Bob Seeger song “Like a Rock” playing in the background were pretty good. But I’ll bet Bob is kicking himself in the ass for not selling that song to the Viagra folks. He probably would have made a lot more money and it certainly would have made for a more memorable campaign then the awful Elvis rip-off “Viva Viagra”.
In 2007 alone TV stations raked in about $71 billion in ad revenue. Newspapers earned about $42 billion. Even billboards and outdoor advertising took in $10 billion. That’s $123 billion dollars, not including web based ads, spent trying to get you to change your laundry detergent, buy a Ford, or talk to your doctor about a prescription medicine without knowing exactly what it cures.
At $10 billion in annual sales I am certain that the outdoor advertising associations have data showing their form of advertising works. But thinking back, I can honestly say that I have never bought anything because I was inspired to do so by a billboard. I recall a Winston billboard that blew smoke rings. It stood for years in Chicago and while it was cool to see it never altered my choice of carcinogen. Spending most of my day in the car I appreciate the billboards that inform me how far I am from the next McDonalds rest room. But even the most clever eye catching sign out there never got me to make a decision regarding my insurance, my choice of soda pop, or enticed me to buy a Stucky’s nut log. I paid attention to the remarkable number of billboards lining the expressway I traveled for about 20 miles today. In that 20 miles there are exactly 427,502 billboards. Well OK, maybe I didn’t count them all, but there is a full blown shit load of them. One sign right after another, advertising everything from a loaf of bread to a Rolex watch. Now maybe a billboard will remind a busy mother that she needs to stop for a loaf of Wonder bread on the way home, but has it ever reminded someone that they need to buy a Rolex?
$123 billion for advertising is a lot of money. One would think for that kind of dough we would get some greater entertainment value then watching a cartoon bear that craps in the woods and uses Charmin. I actually might have been moved to switch to Pepsi if they would have aired the commercial that showed Michael Jackson with his head on fire. I wonder if it smelled like Bays English Muffins.
