guff

Sales Through Annoyance

It’s said in media circles that talk about oneself, whether positive or negative, is a Good Thing™. Any press you get is valuable press, even if you’re raked through the coals by it. For some reason, a desire for this feeble kind of fame has been translated into the world of advertising. Instead of being whittled away by the time honored methods companies favor in persuading consumers to buy their wares, we now endeavor to hold down our lunch through cloying sales techniques and marketing toilet remnants. This is disconcerting when you learn how ad copy is expected to generate hype, not heckles. Or perhaps I missed class that day. Actually, I missed entire semesters, so I might just be thankfully misinformed.

To make this simple in the explaining part, specimens from the world of television commercials display my point and revulsion quite well. Verizon‘s “Can you hear me now?” nerdy service rep is as good a place to start as a fall off a mountaintop is a nice hiking experience. Like a running gag in an Ernest film, it loses any appeal it may have pretty much the first time you see it. Then there’s comedian Carrot Top hawking AT&T‘s collect call service. (Don’t the tops of carrots sprout green, not auburn? Sorry, wrong rant.) You must have seen his “Cee Aye Ell Ell Aye Tee Tee” by now and wondered when remote controls will finally include a Kill Me button. Am I the only one who finds his harassing antics a great sell for competitor and fellow adgravation 1-800-COLLECT?

And just for a final deadhead count, let’s consider ever so briefly Dell Computer‘s gushing “Dude!” and his need for education in more than just name brand PC’s. Haven’t seen that one yet? You lucky bastard.

Clownish faces peer from magazine adverts while crappy balloon text sprouts from their mouths, providing little sense and less of a relationship to the company that paid for it. Roadside billboards berate us if we don’t pull over immediately to pick up a pair of shoes, or a bra, or cat food, all necessary items for a long drive, apparently. TV and radio and the Internet are a constant flash flood of brainless and (in my eyes) ineffectual advertising tricks and gimmicks. Maybe it sells a fraction of a percentage point more cheeseburgers or computers or funky items at the local Christmas Tree Shop, just barely enough to let mid-level executives keep their day jobs.

And perhaps they dig into that part of our brains better suited for use in a street brawl because they’ve run out of ways to break past the desensitization a cavalcade of cute jingles, celebrity endorsements, and countless experiments perfecting an antidote to freewill have built in us. I certainly don’t expect brilliant and enlightening content in an ad. But why they need to confuse, irritate, and pester is beyond my comprehension, unless it’s a yen to treat us to the advertising equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard — then I understand.

How I loath that screeching noise as it works it’s way down my spine. Few things cause a classroom to face forward quicker. Too bad for the ad wizards it only gets our attention, not our interest. Got any spitballs ready?