Commercial Messages

TV commercials can sometimes overwhelm us with audio and visual effects so their actual message is obscured. In this season of heightened football activity, it is even more important that we can correctly decode the commercials put before us. Therefore, as a public service, we present this guide to some of the more popular current commercials.

TV Ads

TV Facemash

As recounted in the movie, The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg originally created a site called Facemash, in which viewers were shown pairs of photos of Harvard students and asked to pick which one was hotter. To update this concept, we'd like to use more familiar faces from TV.  So here's our TV Facemash.

Who's hotter?

Progressive Insurance	T-Mobile
Jess (Domino's Pizza)	Pat (Saturday Night Live)
Geico	Mucinex

Ad Hokum

The local airport has "free" WiFi ... free, that is, if you agree to watch a sponsor's ad.  You get a list of sponsors, and you can choose whose ad to watch.

We all know Google's billions are primarily advertising revenue.  Is this the model of the future?  Maybe we can eliminate lots of payments simply by agreeing to watch ads.  Those folks in Tennessee whose house burned down because they failed to pay the annual fire department fee?  Suppose they could simply have agreed to watch a Geico ad in exchange for fire fighting service?  Okay, that's a bit cruel, but some insurance ad.  As long as it wasn't an infomercial, some of their property and pets might have been saved.

Could this model be extended to cover police, sanitation and other services?

Isn't this really the best answer for health care?  The more serious your condition, the longer you're likely to be laid up.  And while you're taking up a hospital bed, you can be watching all the latest Nasonex or Cialis ads.  (Of course, sponsors might not want to cover terminal patients.)

Ultimately, if you can pay for everything by watching ads, then even the goods and services that are advertised will be paid for by watching other ads.  Hmmm.  This has possibilities.

Media Critical Judgement -- YAFS

As I've railed previously on this blog, most recently here, advertising is the commodity on the Web. Or, more precisely, attention is the commodity. That's what all content providers and advertisers are after ... a bit of your attention.

That's fine. If that's what supports the creation of excellent content like this blog (I wish!), so be it. But as readers and viewers, we have a certain obligation to develop critical faculties and judgment. We need to acquire the ability to discriminate between the well argued and documented, and the merely loud.

This is no different from TV commercials. They're all louder than the programs they infest, so you can hear them even when you go to the fridge for a snack. And they all try to be cute and memorable, as opposed to persuasive. Think about the commercials that stick in your mind. Do you think Geico Insurance is better than any other because they have cavemen or a cute animated gecko? Does that horde of extras stalking the Verizon customer really prove their service is better?

Given that more research is done on the effectiveness of ads than probably any other aspect of human behavior, these techniques must work, despite their irrationality. That's why we all need to learn to evaluate advertising claims critically. And because of product placements, viral marketing, and other means of infiltrating seemingly innocuous content, we need to apply this critical thinking to all content. Otherwise, we're just supporting and encouraging more intrusive and misleading promotion, as Seth Godin describes on his blog.

My father used to sit in front of the TV and say "YAFS!" to the commercials. (This was in the days before mute buttons.) YAFS is an acronym for "You Are Full of ... well, something." No exaggeration. I grew up watching TV with this constant reminder to be skeptical of commercials. You can imagine the cynicism this engendered.

Now you know why I'm such a curmudgeon.