Where did these things come from?

This morning I find myself in some kind of bizarre, parallel universe where services that help you date a cougar or commit infidelity are no longer hidden in the depths of the internet, but are advertised openly on TV. The following isn't the same ad for CougarLife.com that I saw during the Daily Show, but it exists (and apparently isn't allowed to run during that show "Cougar Town") and that is disturbing enough.

I mean, I'm all about being true to who you are, but can you imagine an ad for a service where the genders were reversed? (I assume it would be called "golddigger.com.")

At the next commercial break, I saw this gem:

It has a song. It has a cartoon. It has me completely confused. Why does one need this service? People have been unfaithful since the dawn of time; this seems like offering a food mastication service. Evidently there have been previous, live action, "racy" ads for this service that make a better case for it: you see, Ashley Madison will help you keep it on the DL, so you aren't caught with your sexy secretary in your own bed. Instead, if the above version is to be believed, you'll go to a hotel with the creepiest lounge lizard they can find, and your slug of a husband will be none the wiser. I actually think their depiction of the husband works against them: the cartoon wife could clearly have had sex with her lounge lizard on his lap and he wouldn't have noticed.

What has our society come to? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is there even a case to be made for it being a good thing? I can't believe these services are advertised during the Daily Show. They think that is there demographic. I think that means that they think I'm their demographic. Uhg. It's all so depressing.

I don't get this either

Here is another entry in the Annals of Marketing That Can't Possibly Be Effective.

I assume that the idea is that you'll see this ad and think, "Wow, that girl is cute and hip and singing right to me. And this song isn't at all an irritating earworm!" What I find surprising is that she says, in the song, that internet college is not real college. Well, she says they're not all the same and you have to find "the right one." But University of Phoenix and ITT Tech commercials spend hours every day telling you how real they are and how much the people who "attended" them love them. It seems like admitting that internet colleges might be less than legitimate undermines that whole idea.

I also find it curious how much this ad diverges from the University of Phoenix/ITT Tech model. Where are the successful professionals, the single moms, the guys who no longer live in their mother's basements? No one in this ad is wearing khakis or a sports jacket; no one is giving a testimonial about how much they love working at an IT help desk in some nameless corporate dungeon. A friend of mine tells a story about how someone she works with has paid upwards of $20,000 for a University of Phoenix MBA and couldn't understand why they never got past the interview stage for any new job. Finally, they asked one of the interviewers, "What could I do to make my interview stronger?" and was told that the problem wasn't with their interview skills, it was with their degree. The interviewer said that while s/he was sure one learned something in online college, it just wasn't the same as a real degree. My friend's coworker was completely blindsided by this information. It is my experience that most people who decide to get an online degree really believe in the process - I mean, you'd have to with the price you pay. I am surprised that someone out there believes internet college has great untapped market in wannabe hipsters watching The Mighty Boosh on Adult Swim late on a Sunday night.

There's another one with a girl in her pajamas saying something about "I'm not going to bed; I'm going to college. No, really!" Like no 19-year old girl has ever gone to college in her pajamas. Really - have the people who make these ads never been to an actual college campus? Going to class in your nightwear is not an experience exclusive to classroomless courses. Also: why is that a selling point? Shouldn't the selling point be "you don't have to find parking" or "you can do this late at night, between your two full time jobs, after you put the kids to bed but before you have to drive them to school"? Anyway, these commercials bug me and I don't know why I care. Maybe because the song in the first is such an earworm. Or maybe I wish that I had gone to internet college. It wouldn't have saved me any money and I wouldn't feel comfortable telling anyone where I went, but it would have been a shorter walk.

"It's your f-ing duty, so just buy a GM already. Jesus!"

I know I'm a little behind on the times with this, and I've been meaning to write about it for a while, but I've been busy and haven't found the time. Until today! Because I'm home sick, and I'm bored and can't watch the TV because it is babysitting our niece!

Have you seen the GM rally cap ad? If not, here you go:



So. Right. I think it's just awful. Insulting, really.

"You know what America needs right now?"

Yes, in fact, yes I do. America needs equal pay for equal work. America needs health care coverage for all Americans. America needs her troops back home and getting the benefits they were promised and deserve. American needs her people to stop buying on credit and to learn to economize. America needs to educate all... What now? I'm sorry, what was that?

"America needs a come back."

Um, okay. I guess that's kind of the same thing, I mean, assuming we had all those things before the most recent economic crisis.

Nope, sorry: upon a quick check of any reference anywhere, we have never had those things, so a "come back" is setting the bar kind of low.

"Because we can do this, if we all start thinking differently."

Yeah, that's true! We can get this country all the things her citizens need and it will need to start with thinking differently!

Huh? Oh, you meant that whole "come back" thing. Right. So, um, how will thinking differently get us to this to the low bar you've set? It seems like "thinking samely" would be a better way to get back to where you were a decade ago.

"At GM, we're reinventing the entire company, starting with the ownership experience."

That is a great idea! Yes, make owning a GM like owning a better, more reliable car. Wait, can you just make a better, more reliable car instead?

"Introducing the Total Confidence Plan. It starts with up to nine months of payment protection. Lose your job? We'll make your payments, up to five hundred a month."

Okay, this seems like a nice thing to do, but is based on anything? What is the average length of time someone is out of a job these days? Will 9 months cover you? And what's the catch: do you have to make payments for 9 additional months once you get a new job? Also: why are you encouraging people to buy a new car with $500/month payments in this economy?? That just seems irresponsible.

"Then something you've never seen before: vehicle value protection. When you buy a new car, we'll help protect it's retail value at trade in time."

Again, unless you can make it be Not A GM, I don't see how this is possible. I assume it's because you'd be buying another GM. But doesn't that seem like blackmail? Or at least coercion?

"It also comes with our fully-backed, five-year/100,000 mile powertrain warranty, and the safety and security of On-Star, standard."

I'm just gonna go ahead and assume everyone hears "And believe us, you're gonna need it" after "warranty". On-Star just seems like bells and whistles to distract from the major faults inherent in any recent GM. And just as an aside: I have always wondered about the phrase, "fully-backed powertrain warranty." 1) Are you ever offered a "partially-backed" warranty? 2) Is it just on your powertrain? I assume that's something to do with the transmission. Or is it a PowerTrain warranty, like, it's as powerful as a train?

"It's time to reinvent, it's time to rally. It's time to come back with the total confidence plan."

Okay, where is the reinvention? You're still selling GMs. You have not once said that they will be of better quality, more reliable, better looking. Will they get better mileage? Will they have lower emissions? Will they buy you a puppy? You can't just point at a thing and say, "Ah, haha, I hereby reinvent this! See, it's reinvented!" It's not a performative, like pronouncing two people man and wife.

I'm going to skip over the next phrase for a moment to comment on the final sentence of the commercial (before they tell you to visit their website), but don't worry, I'll come back to it. (Ha! See what I did there?) Telling people "it's time to come back" implies that they were GM customers and left for whatever reason, but that those reasons are moot because they evidently signed some kind of agreement that after a certain amount of time, they would return to GMs cold, steel bosom. It's got this whole paternalistic vibe to it that, while appropriate for calling your kids in at night ("Kids! It's time for dinner! You have to come in, now!"), is not really appropriate for appealing to potential customers.

And now back to the phrase, "It's time to rally."

I guess the paternalism is really the core of what bothers me here. GM seems to believe that it has the right to tell you when to buy its vehicles and that it has simply held back in exercising that right because up until now, the economy was strong. They aren't saying, "These new models are totally awesome and address any, let alone all, of your concerns." They're saying, "Okay kids, it's time to suck it up! You have to buy a GM now!" And they're telling you that somehow this is going to fix America. That buying a GM is going to... what? Make us what we were? No, just make GM what it was. Kind of.

Finally, the whole rally cap thing strikes me as a misjudgement. If I understand the concept of the rally cap correctly, it's when fans turn their ball caps inside out if their team is losing near the end of the game. It's a show of support where there's nothing else you can do. (It's also another example of Magical Thinking in baseball, like the curse on the Cubs, but that is neither here nor there. I just think it's funny that baseball has more superstitions than a 17th century Welsh farmer.) So here is GM's basic thesis, in SAT syllogism format, as far as I can understand it.

Rally cap : Baseball game outcome :: Buying a GM : Fixing the economy

It implies that the only Americans who are cheering for the home team are those who are buying a GM. It implies that the average American cannot effect change in their country so they might as well give up on anything more significant than a symbolic gesture. It implies that GM has the right to make demands of you, that GM is the sole arbitrator of what is or is not American, and that like growing a Victory Garden in WWII, buying a GM in 2009 is a patriotic duty. And they're not going to offer you a goddamn thing to make it worth your while. 5 year/100,000 mile warranties and On Star are old hat; GM's been slapping those on their cars for years now.

The only things that are new are the "payment protection" plan (which also implies that you're likely to lose your job, making it unclear why you should be encouraging people to add another payment to their monthly bills) and the mythical "value protection" plan. I mean, whose to say in five years that they didn't do their damnedest to protect the retail value of your car, and they did, they really did, but gosh, how could they have known car values would drop by half, but they saved you some of that, so you're really only losing 40%, aren't they great?

What are your thoughts? Did this strike you as ridiculous as well? Were you insulted? Do you think anyone heard this message and went out and bought a GM?

Elitist Coffees for Douchebags

Have you seen the new McDonald's ads for their "gourmet" coffee drinks? I cannot believe that this works for them. On any level. I think what they're going for is "Cappuccino is an elitist, snob drink that we're bringing to the people," but what they're actually saying (in my opinion) is "Cappuccino is an elitist, snob drink and the only people who would ever drink it are elitist douchebags, but once McDonald's serves it, you'll see, the snobbiness is all a put on because secretly everybody wants to drink coffee at McDonalds." I just don't understand how this is an ad campaign. "Hey assholes! Come drink our snooty drinks!" And the implication that a soul patch or enjoying books (and yes, even "films", although I might agree with them about berets on adult men) could only ever be a put on, that's just so degrading. To everyone. It tells the average McDonald's customer that they cannot like these things. Come on, McDonalds! Times have changed; there's a new game in town called optomism, respect and pro-book-learnin'. Get on the Obama Train, guys!

PS: I think there are two of these ads, but I couldn't find the other one quickly. I did learn, however, that Kiwis are idiots. McDonald's: why are you insulting your customers so much?

Campaign lit

I'm trying a new thing: short posts. It's very hard for me, as a natural-born bloviator. Normally I would wax philosophical (read: gripe) about all the campaign lit making it our way, what it means, why it's nutty, how badly they've missed their target audience... But instead I'm just going to mention the one thing that actually caught my eye from a Yes on 57 ad.

Measure 61 is a failed, one-size-fits-all approach to crime.
...
Measure 57 has some things we really need. It targets repeat offenders of crimes like identity theft and requires drug treatment.

I read that and laughed to myself. "Oh, who put this together? 'One-size-fits-all is bad! Make all identity thieves get drug treatment!' A+, guys! Like drug treatment is really going to cure repeat identity thieves." Then I read the next sentence.

About 85% of offenders in jail for property crime have drug and alcohol addictions.

You know, that really took the wind out of my imaginings about the one identity thief who isn't a drug addict being required by law to attend NA meetings. Sails. (Sorry - broken metaphor, broken sentence.) He's all, "No, really guys. I do not do drugs." And they're all, "Sure you don't, buddy. Look: you flunked the 'I don't do drugs' test. You stole credit card numbers." And he's like, "But I wanted them to feed my internet porn addiction!" And at about that time my brain registered, "wow, 85%? really?" That's a pretty good idea, drug treatment, if that stat is true.

THE END