Wednesday, May 07, 2014
Someone wrote that...
The other night I was flipping around on the TV and came across an ad where two women are having coffee, when they decide to discuss gas.
Woman one: I'm having a lot of gas.
Woman two: Oh, I have just the thing!
Then the second woman goes and retrieves the product, holds it next to her face and describes it in a flat, slightly horrified voice.
The thing that struck me about this ad isn't just that it exists, but that someone wrote it. For some guy at an ad agency, writing an ad for this medicine was his job, and this is what he did with it! And then there were meetings, and people talked about it, and concurred.
How does that happen?
Woman one: I'm having a lot of gas.
Woman two: Oh, I have just the thing!
Then the second woman goes and retrieves the product, holds it next to her face and describes it in a flat, slightly horrified voice.
The thing that struck me about this ad isn't just that it exists, but that someone wrote it. For some guy at an ad agency, writing an ad for this medicine was his job, and this is what he did with it! And then there were meetings, and people talked about it, and concurred.
How does that happen?
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I find ads fascinating, in the span of one minute they have to pull you in clueless and spit you out informed and willing to try. Most do the job as is, some are just silly, some are insulting even to average human intelligence and a rare few are downright genial. Your post was such a fun surprise, imagine the process of addressing gas (because let face it, calling it flatulence is offensive)...a serious condition with devastating consequences if manifested at the most inopportune moment (i.e. job interview). But if you think sitting down around a table and exchanging ideas on how to sell the fart remedy, imagine the Pharma team going to work every day (for a while) on the project of coming up with the remedy for farts, or I should say the remedy for meteorism, because that is what they call gas in Pompous.
I actually learned this word from my dad (it is the exact same word in Romanian) when I overheard him ask someone, who complained of various health issues, if they displayed “meteorism”...needless to say wild, inappropriate laughter and cosmic jokes ensued (the ailing person was gone...I do have some manners).
I actually learned this word from my dad (it is the exact same word in Romanian) when I overheard him ask someone, who complained of various health issues, if they displayed “meteorism”...needless to say wild, inappropriate laughter and cosmic jokes ensued (the ailing person was gone...I do have some manners).
I am amused by the (often bad) commercials for kind of awkward products--feminine hygiene, embarrassing medical problems like gas, sex products, etc.--but what stuns me are the many horrific commercials for seemingly ordinary goods. Sure, someone has to write and edit and produce Gas-X commercials, yet the fact that the product is a solution for digestive gas surely makes the process...different. But what about the people who write and edit and produce terrible commercials for regular stuff?
I was thinking about something similar the other day. Actually, two things.
First, someone gave my son a very strange shirt with a robot wearing a tie and Drew Carey-type glasses on it. I told my husband I didn't get it; who puts a Drew Carey robot on a onesie? He pointed out that at least four people "got it": the designer, the person who OK'd it for manufacture, the buyer at the store, and the person who bought it for our kid.
Same thing with that recent ad for cars with Joan Rivers. I can't believe that anyone thought that someone -- especially a man -- would run out and buy a car because SHE was in the commercial. But the ad agency did; the car manufacturer did; Joan Rivers did.
Go figure.
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First, someone gave my son a very strange shirt with a robot wearing a tie and Drew Carey-type glasses on it. I told my husband I didn't get it; who puts a Drew Carey robot on a onesie? He pointed out that at least four people "got it": the designer, the person who OK'd it for manufacture, the buyer at the store, and the person who bought it for our kid.
Same thing with that recent ad for cars with Joan Rivers. I can't believe that anyone thought that someone -- especially a man -- would run out and buy a car because SHE was in the commercial. But the ad agency did; the car manufacturer did; Joan Rivers did.
Go figure.
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