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.

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