Ah, advertising. It's everywhere. I don't watch TV, so I miss a lot of it. But I hear about the most egregious from friends, newspapers and online forums.
One of the worst I have heard of recently is from Quiznos. I sacrificed some brain cells for you, the reader, and watched the ad on its Web site.
It features two women sitting on a park bench, one model-thin and one more traditionally built. The "traditional" woman is eating a very small Quiznos sandwich as the other woman looks on in a jealous rage. The angry woman is thinking, "She's getting so much joy out of that little sandwich. That should be me." Eventually the model growls, "I hate you!" The other woman simpers and giggles in pleasure and disbelief, "Really!"
How many yucky stereotypes does this commercial manage to invoke? Stereotype number one: Attractive women don't eat, especially in public. Not even tiny sandwiches. And if they do, they don't enjoy it. Publicly enjoying food is forbidden for the "model" woman.
Next stereotype -- women should judge each other on their looks and constantly compare themselves to other women. Women should feel hatred for those who more closely resemble the advertising ideal than they do.
Those old enough may remember the shampoo commercials featuring a model cooing, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." Unpacking that statement is pretty easy -- what she is really saying is, "I am beautiful. You are not. You should hate me. Oh, and buy this shampoo, you pathetic person, in your ultimately futile attempt to look like me!"
Next stereotype: If you can incite jealousy and hatred in another woman, you have succeeded in the game of female competition. You should feel happy. Congratulations!
Advertisers have long felt that they must make people feel insecure to sell them products. Whether it is for deodorant, toothpaste, razors, clothes or cars, advertisements play on our desires to be admired, liked and attractive. So ads must make us feel inadequate. If we were happy and satisfied, we might not think it's important to scrape the hair off our bodies with sharp pieces of metal.
Happily, technology is making some advertisements easier to avoid.
With the advent of gadgets like the TiVo digital recorder, the viewer can time shift, watch TV shows when she likes and skip commercials altogether. Those like me who don't watch much TV but do rent DVDs can skip the "coming attractions" ads with a press of a button. Ad-blocking software for Web browsers such as Adblock Plus for Firefox combined with Flashblock make Web surfing much more pleasant.
A recent article in Wired magazine reports that Google has claimed that its e-mail filters are so effective that even the lowest form of advertising life, the spammers, may be giving up!
What are the poor advertisers to do? IBM recently published a press release on Global Business Services' new report, "The End of Advertising as We Know It." They expect bigger challenges for the business of advertising in the next five years than all of the previous 50 combined. The report states, "To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mindset to cater to niche consumer segments and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices."
What they really mean is, they have to find a way to stop those darned viewers from squirming out from under the advertisements! They have to get around the TiVos, the ad-blockers and those who have given up on broadcast TV entirely and rent the shows they want to watch on DVD. To this end, IBM has filed a patent for a "system and method of providing advertisements during DVD playback." It wants a way to force DVD users to watch commercials or pay a premium for more expensive, commercial-free DVDs.
I foresee this leading to a possible future in which advertisers will vie to create the most annoying, painful, disgusting, soul-destroying commercials possible (although maybe we are already there). The viewing audience will have the option to pay to not see the commercials. How much would you pay to never have to see another Quiznos, Axe Body Spray or Girls Gone Wild advertisement? I'd definitely pay more for a DVD that didn't try to force me to watch them.
Eventually, they could stop making commercials altogether, just the threat will be enough to make the viewer cough up the cash so they don't have to see them. They could call it the "monthly media-use, save-your-eyeballs shakedown fee." (MMUSYESF)
Until they strap me in a chair and clamp my eyelids open, I'll keep enjoying my non-Quiznos food (even in public!) and my ad-free DVDs and Web sites and try to do some holiday shopping at the ad-free, sweatshop-free sites found on the "Green Pages" at coopamerica.org. (You didn't notice that ad, did you?)
Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.