Context: My father-in-law, who was recently kicked out of
his house, is staying with us until we find him his own apartment. He’s not
sick, but he can’t be alone and is not self-sufficient. Plus, he has money
problems and cannot be trusted with money. He stays home alone all day,
watching Catholic TV and/or infomercials.
Situation: Boredom + Infomercials + Fiscal
irresponsibility = Disaster. Turns out the old man bought $200 worth of some
miracle pill that’s supposed to cure all ills. My wife, who also works in
advertising, goes berserk and proceeds to chew his ass out. A shouting match
ensues in which the old man “assures” my wife that it’s OK, no harm is done,
because the infomercial makes it perfectly clear that the pills really do work…
Outcome: … to which my wife shouts back: “IT’S
ADVERTISING! OF COURSE THEY’RE GONNA TELL YOU THAT. I WORK IN ADVERTISING, AND
THAT’S WHAT WE DO – WE FOOL PEOPLE INTO BUYING CRAP. OUR BUSINESS IS TO MAKE
SUCKERS OUT OF PEOPLE!”
Truer words cannot be spoken.
As we've said so many times before here at WAS, it's just advertising. Nothing more, nothing less.
1 comments:
There are accounts, and there are accounts... I've worked on accounts where you get paid to get people interested in a product that's actually decent... I've also worked on accounts where they're basically investing money in advertising because they don't care about quality and knows it's a better investment to advertise than it is to make something worthwhile.
And as I've worked in advertising, of course I've worked on ads that serve as pure misdirection...
Just another of the reasons why advertising sucks.
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