A mini-rant, because I’m busy today.
How fucked up is this shit?
My wife and I first saw the image in question, on the right side of the splash page linked above, on a Sherwin-Williams truck while driving to California for a short vacation. It put both of us off. Seeing it again yesterday, while looking for paints, just made me mad again.
A) Covering the world in paint (bright red paint, even) is a bad, bad idea on so many levels. What possible point could there be to such an ad campaign? It bothers me to see such a concept, even if its an exaggeration, espoused as the central theme of any company.
B) On a metaphorical level it’s pretty bad too… thanks to the color they chose for their display, it looks like the Earth is being drenched in fresh blood. Nice touch.
In short, S-W has pretty much driven me away from ever buying their paints with this one image, which they seem to be plastering everywhere they can. Too bad, because we’ve got a lot of painting to be doing in our house in the near future. I’ll buy Martha Stewart paints before I buy this shit.
Shallow? Perhaps… but a stupid (and mildly offensive) ad campaign has this sort of effect on me.