Is it me, or does the Archer Daniels Midland Corporation do everything? Everytime I hear All Things Considered, they’re naming something else they do. I personally think this “Supermarket to the World” is the REAL Illimunati… The only thing I’ve seen that comes close to the wide variety of things AMD claims to do is 3M. Of course, it’s possible that 3M is owned by ADM… Hmmm…
“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”
–Terry Pratchett
Carl
You bring up some very interesting points but I think this is inappropriate because the ADM Corporation is merely a perfectly innocent privately-held transglobal company of indeterminate scope and scale which very much likes its privacy–you wouldn’t want someone showing an unhealthy interest in you, would you?–and the fact that the company’s stock trading symbol is 17/23 is merely a coincidence and no you are not the first person to bring that up and no you cannot visit the factories because there’s nothing there of any interest and anyway all those stories are merely the hysterical ravings of lunatics and no they were not driven mad by what they saw, fnord, and anyway the Illuminati have to eat too wouldn’t you agree and its not like they are going be eating the same thing everyone else does and don’t worry about those people they are no doubt harmless tourists.
I think that commercials by companies that do not make consumer products are an attempt to improve their name recognition. Consumers may not buy the companies actual product, but they can buy the stock. I don’t know why a private, non-consumer company would have commercials.
There’s nothing new about companies who don’t sell to consumers running “image” advertising. They simply want you to think well of them right before the inevitable antitrust investigation or environmental disaster.
I spend a large amount of my workday with various agriculture-related businesses. I can testify that many people think ADM is the rural America version of Microsoft, but I don’t see anything particularly sinister about their advertising strategy.
ADM advertised on “This Week with David Brinkley” primarily because of the chairman’s personal friendship with Brinkley. When Brinkley retired, he started doing ADM commercials which ran on the later version of “This Week.” Many people were confused, thinking Brinkley was still on the show doing commentaries and ABC told ADM the commercials would also have to run on other programs, or not at all. ADM chose to advertise on other Sunday morning news shows, which is where they are to this day.
I understand all the words, they just don’t make sense together like that.
The kinds of companies that advertise on Sunday morning news shows do so because they know that the audiences for those shows are small but a) rich, b) well-connected c) most likely in charge of something. In other words, it’s a good way to hit your potential business contacts without worrying about those poor, boring consumers.
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am