Vanilla Advertising

A seemingly trivial event just happened to me that, as usual, I am about to blow out of all proportion.

I was sitting in a fine establishment waiting for a fine friend of mine. Arriving first, I took a seat at a table and absently watched the nearby television. There was a sporting event on it that I took little notice of and at the finishing of the match, a usual generic series of advertisements began playing. At some point during these advertisements, the sound to the television was remotely turned off and music began playing instead. I did not even notice this change until into the second advertisement. The music so perfectly fit the visuals that the change was negligible until overt.

My initial thought was that the song was just one of those pieces of music that you would expect to hear during an advertisement. It was light, had some inoffensive lyrics and was of a tempo that either matched up well with an advertisement, or served as a suitable contrast to the action of an advertisement. I just assumed that this song was an ideal candidate as an accompaniment to advertisements.

This is probably a harsh judgement on the musician. The more I heard the song the more forgiving I was. In the end, I have to conclude that this little instances makes more of a statement in relation to the advertisements rather than the song. These broadcasts were so generic, so utterly forgettable that I was not even able to discern a difference between them when the same sound was played throughout. I title this piece "Vanilla Advertising" not just because of the implication that all of the broadcasts were essentially the same. I like the taste of vanilla and the effect that this music had on my viewing was also relatively pleasurable. I was able to view them as a whole piece, not containing a contrived agenda and overall, not having any real effect on me.

It is remarkable how small events like this can truly threaten the pull of the advertising world.

-The English Student

Marketing Failures

I have been watching too much television lately.

As such, I have been exposed to quite a lot of terrible marketing campaigns. On a basic level there are three types of poor advertisements. If an ad is obscure in its message and relation to the product or service it is hardly effective. In addition to this, an advertisement that is dishonest about the true benefits of their product or service must be counter productive. A final irritating advertisement style is one that attempts to annoy a consumer into buying their product.

There is one famous advertisement that employs this last method. It is so loud and brash that it would be impossible to ignore. It revels in how cheap the presentation is and the obnoxious presenter is encouraged to irk the listening in every possible way. Is this truly an effective marketing method? Whenever I see these advertisements I take a silent vow to never give them money and thus punish them for their negative marketing techniques. It cannot be denied that the brand is well known on the back of these ads, just not well respected.

All of this was put into stark contrast when I visited a company that has one of the best marketing departments in the world. They use clever and unique ploys. They do not try to bully the consumer or even try to make outlandish claims about their products. Instead, they generally use humour and guile to convince people that they are deserving of our money and this is the benefit of positive marketing campaigns.

Even if we are being tricked into giving up our money, at least we feel good about it.

-The English Student