The state of television advertising
The state of advertising on television has degenerated to a level previously unknown in Lebanon and the Arab World in general. It seems that advertising strategy has shifted from highbrow witty ads that make one smile and put across a marketing message, to one focused entirely on sex, gutter culture, cheap humor and a clumsy attempt at satire.
The Daily Star made a good start
in their recent article about advertising using sex to sell products in the most
salacious and uncouth way possible or allowable under law. But stopping there
is a mistake. What the local news media needs to focus on is the arrogance and
patronizing attitude of ad agencies which clearly hold consumers at the
receiving end of their ads in very little regard and must view this mass, presumably
captive audience (if we discount facebook, twitter and Whatsup), as generally
uncultured, simple minded and undiscerning. It is not the job of ad agencies or marketers to make such sweeping judgement.
Their philosophy is to wow the
senses with a nice cheap show and not give any compelling evidence in support
of the superiority of the product they are marketing. I implore Ad companies to tell me why
I should buy a product, to give me a reason to consider shifting from
my favorite to brand their client’s brand, to give me an
intelligent argument.
The two features of any product
that matter most to consumers, quality and price, are never tackled
intelligently if at all in most TV advertising, barring ads for local banks, which
are generally very clever and tactful. But why can’t ads for other products be
as intelligent and treat the consumer as a voter, because we are, we vote with
our dollars and liras everyday at the supermarket, so please pay attention to us.
At each commercial break, which these
days seems to get longer and longer, we are inundated with beautiful lips
sipping drinks and fashionably dressed people driving sports cars and telling
people to take risks because its cool. Are we in a school yard, is this what
our society has been reduced to? Because from the quality of the ads that’s
what I understand. We get a plethora of platitudinous, sickly sweet statements
trying to sell everything from coffee to patriotism. These ads come one after
the other in quick succession, like some rapid fire white noise torture
machine. When will the ad industry finally pay attention to the consumer
instead of making assumptions about consumers that I at least consider
flawed and inaccurate.
Comments
Post a Comment