“Advertising —- Let’s all bend over and be manipulated”

You know what really pisses me off? It’s the fact that all these marketing bozos are sitting around in shiny suits and leather skirts (the women are wearing the suits), sipping bloody short blacks, and pondering on ways to make me, and you, buy some piece of shit product we would never have even looked at if it wasn’t literally inserted into our consciousness like an alien butt probe on the X-Files. And what is particularly annoying to me is they ruin television by thinking up damn stupid advertisements. They are paid a shit load to do this and they do not care.

I recall complaining a few years ago about a car commercial shown on TV, where one man was cutting another’s hair. It was typical of the era. Black and white, director cutting backwards and forwards between characters, and around the set. The haircuttee said, "… heaps of room, what with the two kids, and another on the way", and the haircutter replied, "What! Another one". The haircuttee said, in an extremely casual manner, with a sly little twist at the corner of his mouth and the proverbial gleam in his eye, "Yeah, you know me!" The first time I heard that line I was tempted to throw the remote through the screen. Would a real adult man say something like that? Really? Okay, what does he do, impregnate in his spare time? And what about his wife? I assume that if she is not available for impregnation he goes for inanimate objects, like the couch, or that cute coffee table with the curvy legs. Think of it, he pops up on Sale of the Century. "What are your hobbies Bob?" says Glenn. "Well Glenn," replies our man. "I enjoy a round of golf, but my real passion is impregnation."

It’s a mediocre story, but what’s the point? The point is surely that those Machiavellian marketing types determined that a certain socio-economic cohort were likely to purchase a Holden Commodore ‘something or other’ and they should be targeted with great gusto by producing expensively shot TV advertising. That cohort were clearly males between 25 and 32, who were prone to bonding with their male hairdresser, and with a strong desire to fornicate (that part could be any man, I admit). Did these phantoms ever buy any cars? I guess Holden’s advertising agency at the time would have put together some figures proving that post-adverts, “we really moved some units, man… can we have some more money?”

But it gets worse! Picture this (pun intended): Hollywood movie; any story line really; man leaves house to get his car from a mechanical repair shop. What does he say? I’m off to get the car? No. He says, “I’m off to pick up the Volvo”. No accident either—this is not literature, where some particular connotation is implied by the author’s choice of words. Saying “Volvo” simply means Volvo paid good, hard Swedish Kroner to get the character to say their name. It’s called ‘product placement’ and it is the devil’s handiwork. Recent example: The Castaway movie starring Tom Hanks. Hire it on video and count the number of times the US freight company FedEx is mentioned. It’s thousands. Tom works for FedEx. It’s a FedEx plane that crashes. On and on.

The whole thing is so pervasive; it’s like an alien virus on the X-Files. No, I’ve used that one. …it’s like a Microsoft operating system then. Any time you see a brand name in a movie—car, computer, perfume, anything—it has been put there by some devious bastard with the sole purpose of bending your mind to the will of the marketing executive who now drives a BMW Z3 Roadster courtesy of your predisposition to bend over and be manipulated.

Well, fuck the lot of them. I am not going to buy a Commodore, ever. Some patronising wanker is not going to trick me into that sort of behaviour. The next time I see some jerk in a movie buy Dominos I’ll buy Pizza Hut. Actually, I prefer Dominos. The next cretin on TV who talks about his Mercedes will cause me to buy Audi. Okay, I can’t afford either brand anyway. Alright, when next I see a computer in a movie with IBM emblazoned across it I will race out and buy a Macintosh. As it happens I wouldn’t piss on an IBM if it were on fire. Whatever. You get the idea.