I don’t know about you, but commercials on TV drive me crazy. Yeah. I know. I sound like a grumpy old lady. But seriously. Have you paid attention to ads lately?
Let’s start with ads for Viagra and other assorted male sex drive enhancers — especially the one where a sexy young woman looks right at the screen and discusses the positive side-effects of the pill she’s being paid to sell. Seriously, gentlemen, you don’t really think that if you get your hands on that medication a woman who looks like her is going to look at you seductively . . . do you? Or that your wife of 40-some-odd years is suddenly going to look like the woman on the ad? Because if you do, then we need to discuss another issue entirely.
But if you’re realistic, aren’t you the tiniest bit insulted that the drug company thinks you might fall for it? I hope so. I like to think you’re all much smarter than that.
Or the tissue ad in which a little boy on a bus stops to “console” a little girl who is crying. Only the boy doesn’t actually console the girl at all. Instead, he spends the whole time talking about boys who are supposedly all touchy-feely and sensitive. Really, tissue company? Your idea of making a boy seem sensitive is to show him talking about himself to a girl who is obviously distraught, never once asking what she’s upset about?
And why do so many commercials ask me to “Say Hello” to their product? I don’t want to say hello, even if I buy the product, I’m not talking to it. Or what about all the companies who suddenly claim that “this changes everything.” No. It doesn’t. Or proudly announcing that something old is somehow new and previously unknown, like “six is greater than one.” Do we really look that stupid? I sincerely hope not.
I realize I’m not the target demographic anymore. In fact, to many companies I’ve fallen completely off the radar screen. I realize they’re targeting those who are younger and more upwardly mobile (or whatever the catch phrase of the decade is). I’m okay with that. Can’t change it, even if I want to.
But I’m still not buying it.
Waxing the Turtle 