Are American commercials demeaning to your intelligence?

Great Debates
1

Commercials seem to be progressively getting worse, IMO. It seems the whole marketing aspect of commercials has turned into flashy text, “witty” humor, or a complete lack of information given. Honestly, how often do you turn on the TV, see a commercial and then come to the realization that you have no idea what it was for? Here are some samples of commercials I’m talking about.

(No idea what car it’s for, but) A girl comes home with an honor role sticker and asks her dad if she can put it on the car and he suggests they put it on their mothers car (because his car is too nice). Mildy funny, but why do I want to buy their car? It tells me nothing about it.

McDonalds commercial, something to do with a salad. It’s spinning and flying around in the air, with some woman singing about how much she likes the new salad. Maybe appealing to another demographic, but “huh” would be my initial response.

My father was in marketing for 20 years and recently switched to manage a company because he’s being replaced with younger advertisers who are more, “with it”. (just as a kicker I’m not writing this because I’m angry at these new advertisers.) I was talking to him the other night, he laughed and said, “I remember when we had to make commercials that told people what the product was, now we would be sitting around a table discussing some goofy scenario to get people interested rather than informed.” A year ago I sat in on one of the commercials they were going to be airing during the Super-Bowl. It was really funny, but they didn’t have much time left to put the information about “where to call and go”. Eventually they found a way to squeeze their info in the last few seconds of the commercial.

For me it’s gotten to the point where I just can’t sit through commercials any more, for examlpe that McDonalds commercial that was aired recently. It said to me, “Look here stupid, look at this spinning salad and this cool lady dancing and singing, this salad is SO EXCITING AND HIP!!!” Come on… am I really stupid enough to think I’ll be singing and dancing with excitement by buying this?

Anyways, maybe this is more of an “entertainment vs. information” debate. None-the-less, I’m curious to hear your opinions on this.

-BHB

2

Oops, I forgot I said, Are American commercials demeaning to your intelligence. I said this because commercials can really differ from region to region. So, I’m talking about American commercials(primarily large corporate American commericals, i.e. McDonalds, Nike, KFC, etc.).

-BHB

3

This sounds more like an IMHO thin, but what the hey.

I don’t know, I kind of like commercials that soft-pedal the product in favor of a witty non sequiter. But to directly answer the OP, many TV ads do insult the intelligence of the viewer (or else the average viewer is in fact complete moron). But they always have, and it doesn’t matter, because I pretty much ignore any ads that are not at least of aesthetic interest, and I suspect most other folks do as well.

Regardless of the originality or otherwise of any ad, I almost never purchase products based on advertising testimonials. For example, the choice for my biggest-ticket recent purchase, a 2001 Subaru Impreza, was based entirely on magazine reviews. At the time, Subaru apparently did no TV advertising for that line at all (AFAIK they only started running TV ads with the introduction of the 2002 WRX).

One of the things that struck me about American TV ads after having lived in Europe for several years is how often the ad remains simply an excuse for displaying the product and repeating its name as many times as possible in the time allotted. That said, in recent years certain companies and their ad agencies have been paying greater attention to the European style (more of a story-telling structure, with the product-maker’s tag line only revealed at the end).

Of the companies mentioned in the OP:

Nike: not sure what the complaint is here. Does anyone really want to know the technical features of the shoes, from a TV ad? Most of their ads are brilliant evocations of the joy of athletics, and that’s fine with me. With the swoosh one of the most recognizable logos in the world, no further description is necessary, IMO.

But my most recent pair of athletic shoes were Adidas; I don’t recall seeing any ads that made me want to buy them.

Fast food ads: almost uniformly awful, just like the food purveyed by their makers. I will give a nod, however, to some of the recent ones for Jack in the Box (Silence!). The one for a new hamburger that subtly satirizes those “tough truck” ads was a hoot.

Car ads: they’ve always been three major types – 1) “I’m so sexy”, 2) “it’s my most prized possession” and 3) “it’ll last a thousand years with no maintenance”. It must be hard as hell to come up with anything remotely original under such strict constraints. I laugh to think of last summer, when at leat three separate manufacturers simultaneously were running ads based on car owners valiantly defending their vehicles from errant shopping carts (obviously variant #2). Of any of the manufactueres, Volkswagen’s continue to be the most innovative, but even they emit some clunkers.

And not mentioned in the OP, but there should be sa pecial circle of Hell reserved for whoever comes up with cell phone ads. Verizon, Sprint, whoever: they all bite the big one, all the time.

4

Well, you remembered the ads, which is the best the marketers could hope for.

And you might be a little too young to start complaining about how things were better in the old days. Have you ever seen reruns of old shows where they would stop in the middle for a five-minute pitch from the show’s sponsor? Now that was lame.

5

A general trend, which I’ve remarked on before: In the past (I’m thinking here mainly of commercials from the 70’s when I was growing up), commercials tried to pack as much information about the product as possible into their 30 second (or whatever) slot. Now, more and more, the opposite philsosophy seems to apply. Little to no information, and pure image. The extreme examples are those jeans commercials that have absolutely no information about the product whatsoever except a small logo at the end.

Anyway, yes, I do find many commercials to be insulting to my intelligence. But, at the risk of sounding snobbish, I doubt they’re insulting to the intelligence of the “average viewer”. As it says in (the usual paraphrasing of) the Mencken quote: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

Well, maybe. But that can backfire, too. If I remember that an ad annoyed me, I’m less likely to choose that particular product than if I was just selecting from among a number of relatively unknown brands.

6

i prefer dumb commercials over offensively descriptive ones. if i’ve just sat down to enjoy a Jell-O Pudding Fast-Pack (now in 3 great flavors), i’d rather not hear about the PAINFUL VAGINAL ITCHING that some medication suppresses.

on the contrary, i’d prefer to know which beverage michael jordan is currently endorsing.

7

First thing to come to mind after reading that was:

“I’d like to teach the world to sing …”

Followed by “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” and “Plop Plop fizz fizz.”

What 70’s commercials are you thinking about?

Another element, what may be remembered as presentation of product info in the 60s and 70s, may in fact have been emotional appeals to public infatuation with techological advances, better living through modern chemistry, etc.

8

What, you want specifics?

Um, there was the one…er…the part of the stuff about the things?..the things?

Okay, you got me. I can’t think of any specific examples. Just a general impression I had.

Seems to me that for a lot of products, after the cutesy bit, they’d have a lot of scrolling text at the end telling you why their product was so great. But I can’t for the life of me remember any specific ones right now. So feel free to ignore that bit.

But those jeans commercials still bug me.

9

I’d like to acknowledge Sky Daddy for shouting “PAINFUL VAGINAL ITCHING” within his first 4 posts to the SDMB. In GD, no less. What an auspicious beginning to live up to! :wink:

10

hi.

have i broken the intellectual’s code of straight dope forum ethics? are you actually pissed about that or was it just a thing to say?

bye.

11

The Viagra race car commercial is lame.

12

I think part of the problem with the increasing reliance of flash over substance is the fact that people tend to tune commercials out, more so now than before - probably because they’re so muc more ubiquitous now. Heck, they’re practically subliminal to me. After a given 30-minute stretch of TV-watching, I probably couldn’t name a single commerical. The exceptions are the flashy, funny, or innovative ones. Volkswagon, Jack in the Box, et al, these are the commercials I actually remember. Now whether or not they make me want to buy anything is a different story.

Now for other products, I can see how flashy and funny would be pointless. Pretending you know nothing about, say, Viagra, a commercial that just flashes the word “Viagra” on the screen for 30 seconds in pretty colors probably won’t do much to boost sales. The exception being commercials that actually build curiosity and mystique over the course of a long ad campaign. I remember Infiniti and, to a lesser extent, M-Life doing a good job in establishing a “What the heck is this?” attitude where the answer wasn’t “Who gives a damn?”

To answer the OP, are commercials getting stupider? I would say no more than ever, but they are being designed to appeal to a world becoming more and more used to marketing.
Jeff

13

I think the commercials, or rather the advertisers, have gotten much smarter. Not by appealing to our intelligence, but appealing to our emotions.

Somewhere, way back, someone (I think Nike) had an advertisement set to the music of the Beatles Revolution. It was revolutionary.

Now, classic 70s rock can be found on the majority of commercials. And not just mainstream stuff. I watched a Cadillac commercial the other evening with a Led Zeppelin tune (and someone else has one running with LZ Black Dog).

They have co-opted our culture and our emotional connections to youth and associated them through music with their brands.

Which leads to the next observable trend - the dance music beat with lots of movement and quick cuts - almost perfectly mimicing the MTV music video (back when MTV actually played music videos), appealing more to the generation just behind me.

Whatever happened to the catchy 70s jingle? Now that I think about it, those jingles were really sapping, much like popular music before the proliferation of rock in the late 50s.

Oh well.

14

Naw, Dinsdale was tipping his hat to you. It’s not everybody who can hit the ground running, as it were, and find a way to fit PAINFUL VAGINAL ITCHING into a debate over the merits of advertising trends. Hell, it took me dozens, if not hundreds, of messages before I got anybody to spew diet Coke out of their nose while reading Great Debates.

15

The older commercials that I remember seemed to all say “we’re the best. Really, we are. Buy our product.” the information supposedly proved that they were the best. Obviously they couldn’t all be the best. For the most part, they were all pretty much the same. Yes, there was info, but it wasn’t really believable, and that was more or less insulting.

To use your jean example, what information about the jeans could you possibly want? Once you’ve seen the jeans you know pretty much all there is to know about them. So, it makes much more sense for them to try and make me associate “jeans” with “GAP” or “jeans” with “Levi” in the flashiest way possible so the next time I buy jeans, I head straight for their product.

16

This shift, if it does exist (and the examples of 1970’s commercials produced thus far in this thread do not thus far indicate that this shift exists), may in part be due to the fact that in the 1970s you only had 3 national TV networks and a few pipsqueak independent stations to watch, whereas today you have, what, 500 gazillion cable/satellite TV channels plus the World Wide Web all vying for your attention?

And, worse, you now have TV remote controls to contend with. In the 1970s you could rely on people leaving the TV on the same station during the commercial breaks, but today, cutting to a commercial is a sure-fire way of encouraging viewers to channel-surf.

17

Maybe, but someone at least lost a lot of money on the XFL.

Regarding the techniques of older vs. newer commercials: Being a child of the eighties, I grew up surrounded by flashy television commercials that never spent more than 1.5 seconds on a take, full of loud music, wild visuals, and attitude. So by now, like others in this thread have mentioned, I pretty much tune out commercials altogether. I might notice a particularly amusing or visually interesting commercial, but almost never will an ad actually give me a desire to acquire the product.

Now, a few months back I purchased on the internet some old sci-fi radio dramas from the 1950’s. Some of these old broadcasts contain the original commercials. One particular run of ads was for Wheaties, the cereal. The ad consisted of some friendly, paternal sounding guy talking about how great Wheaties were. “Now wouldn’t it just feel great to get some of that whole grain wheat early in the morning? Full of vitamins and mineral, each flake a baked piece of corn that will give you what you need to feel your best all morning long. Wheaties at seven will make you feel good at eleven!”

Something about the simple straightforwardness of this ad wormed its way though my MTV-hardened shields. I found myself actually craving Wheaties and even went and bought some. I imagine it would make some ninety-year old ad exec somewhere proud to know his ad was still having an effect after all these decades.

It also made me wonder if advertisers now wouldn’t be more successful if they abandoned the current arms race to develop the biggest, flashiest, cleverest ad, and instead returned to the simpler sensibilities of yesteryear. Like an ancient virus released after millions of years trapped in amber, these old techniques wouldn’t face the immunities modern consumers have developed to the current advertising styles.

18

What I have noticed lately is a sharp increase in the number of male-bashing ads. Dumb husband, dumb boyfriend, that sort of thing … if gender roles were reversed, you know women’s groups would be outraged.

From the looks of the various “outrageous foreign commercials” shows that air on US networks from time to time, it’s as if every European commercial is a 30 second soft core porn film, with a brief product blurb in the end.

US commercials are definitely better than those in Mexico, though. About 75% of all commercials airing on stations south of the border incorporate the “todo la familia” theme in some way. Gets boring after a while. “Bacardi … para los niños!” :wink:

19

I’d just like to note that on a similar note that advertisers certainly insult their OWN intelligence when their ads get placed in completely wrong shows. For instance, advertising bikini wax during a James Bond flick isn’t exactly hitting your target audience.

20

That isn’t so bad.

What i find amusing is when commericals have you make the buyer out to be grossly incompetent just to trick people into thinking there is a market for their product.

‘i can’t put all these clothes in this closet’
‘i can’t blow up this air mattress’