Advertisers think this asshole can sell us pickup trucks
and DirectTV. God help us!
x
x
Two Orioles games, four NFL games, two college football games (HOORAY FOR MICHIGAN!), and two NASCAR races while wanting to be able to watch some of the PGA action, more baseball, and USC versus Ohio State, it was just another typical weekend for the All-American guy in Chesapeake Country, but damned those damned advertisements are getting more annoying every season.
Sports Fans: Who Do They Think We Are?
Advertising is supposed to influence our opinion of products and motivate us to but them. However, when we consider what’s going into the marketing behind the ads, what better way to judge what a sponsor thinks of its customers?
Corporate America spends billions on market research to figure out who buys their products and what their interests and push buttons are that could be manipulated to get customers to buy everything from beer to health insurance.
Look at the advertisements you watch on your favorite television programs, and you’ll get a good snapshot of how they assess us, what their opinion is of their viewers.
I conclude particularly for sports fans, they think we’re boorish and stupid. How else can you explain Dennis Leary selling Direct TV with its special NFL programming and Ford F-150 pickup trucks? Excuse me, I don’t want to have anything to do with Dennis Leary. I hate his public persona. Why would anyone find such an insensitive, rude, lout so appealing?
Beer commercials used to be a riot. Remember the Budweiser frogs and lizards or the cat fight in the fountain for Miller Lite? Of course, they were blasted for using cartoon like figures for they might entice children to want to drink beer and surely the feminists went bonkers over the cat fight.
These days, beer ads are more inclined to show the kinds of fellows they think drink their beer and these aren’t exactly the sharpest fellows. They come across as Animal House rejects who’d never make it into the frat because they’d never get accepted to college in the first place. Think of the Heineken Light ad where two goofballs spill their beer, are pitied by the usher, led to the fancy seats, served a couple Heinekens, and then a sharp brown-eyed girl asks, “Hey guys, pass me one. PLEASE!” You get the impression they’re so into admiring their victory and guzzling their brews they’re going to completely blow off this lovely lady. Of course, we could talk about the Coors Light ads where the yahoos question pro-football coaches. Again, they’re not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Locally in the mid-Atlantic, MASN has been airing their “defining moment” series to promote Orioles and Nationals games on TV. In this series, MASN presents typical fans standing in front of a video display that looks a little like Camden Yards’ scoreboard raving about something that makes them worship their hometown team. The selection of characters provides a broad cross section ethnically, by age, and gender supposed to show the wide appeal of baseball. Fair enough, but obviously most of them were white males from teen to golden years.
How could they find such obnoxious specimens to represent Chesapeake area baseball fans? We’ll even go as far to say that the Washington Nationals fans are definitely more appealing than the Orioles fans. While watching these ads, it wasn’t hard to think of those folks out at the ball yard who think they are the world’s greatest and smartest fans ever to show up with their sacred Elysian Fields before them sitting way too close for comfort who are all too eager to engage every paying customer sitting near them as subjects to their lectures about all they know (or truly don’t know) about baseball as if the very fate of mankind rested on their words. One could also think of the boorish blabber mouth at the local watering hole or sports bar who won’t stop blabbering in a loud obnoxious voice acting like everyone in the facility is his best buddy as long as those persons just quietly nod and bob like a bobble head as long as the self-appointed sports expert feels some kind of enabler’s support for his blathering. These are the kinds of folks, as so well depicted in these ads who make the unwilling subject of their rants just think, “Where can I run and hide?”
If fans made the association these are the kind of people who pack the stands at the ballparks in Baltimore and DC, is it any wonder attendance is so low?
Advertising has always run spots that completely miss their marks, but there are certain trends today that give rise to particularly offensive advertisements. First, the media is so detached and elitist; it feels far superior to its patrons whether it’s how the media covers the news, its programming or advertising. Second, the culture of political correctness and identity politics has invaded Madison Avenue where it’s just as damaging as it is to Wall Street. The only certain result is bland mediocrity and intellectual vapidity.
The irony is the audience for sports consists largely of male viewers in the prime demographics where customers for everything from beer to pickup trucks to financial services are riveted to football, baseball, basketball, and hockey games, NASCAR races, and the PGA tour. Few audiences are more steady viewers. However, in this new multicultural society where all hell breaks loose every time someone of a particular identity is offended, the only people who are allowed to be portrayed as idiots are white men or very attractive blonde females. Yes, men are the dum-dums who depend on their daughters to know when they need to touch up their gray hair and learn how to tie their neckties. Of course look at the burglars portrayed in ads for home security systems. They’re all white guys from 20-40 generally needing a shave. Imagine if an African American were portrayed as a home intruder?
Get the picture. Soon we’ll have the technology to push a button on our TV’s to program in quickie little videos that we can punch up every time there’s an ad break during our favorite telecasts. What device is more personally empowering than the remote control?
Advertising is supposed to influence our opinion of products and motivate us to but them. However, when we consider what’s going into the marketing behind the ads, what better way to judge what a sponsor thinks of its customers?
Corporate America spends billions on market research to figure out who buys their products and what their interests and push buttons are that could be manipulated to get customers to buy everything from beer to health insurance.
Look at the advertisements you watch on your favorite television programs, and you’ll get a good snapshot of how they assess us, what their opinion is of their viewers.
I conclude particularly for sports fans, they think we’re boorish and stupid. How else can you explain Dennis Leary selling Direct TV with its special NFL programming and Ford F-150 pickup trucks? Excuse me, I don’t want to have anything to do with Dennis Leary. I hate his public persona. Why would anyone find such an insensitive, rude, lout so appealing?
Beer commercials used to be a riot. Remember the Budweiser frogs and lizards or the cat fight in the fountain for Miller Lite? Of course, they were blasted for using cartoon like figures for they might entice children to want to drink beer and surely the feminists went bonkers over the cat fight.
These days, beer ads are more inclined to show the kinds of fellows they think drink their beer and these aren’t exactly the sharpest fellows. They come across as Animal House rejects who’d never make it into the frat because they’d never get accepted to college in the first place. Think of the Heineken Light ad where two goofballs spill their beer, are pitied by the usher, led to the fancy seats, served a couple Heinekens, and then a sharp brown-eyed girl asks, “Hey guys, pass me one. PLEASE!” You get the impression they’re so into admiring their victory and guzzling their brews they’re going to completely blow off this lovely lady. Of course, we could talk about the Coors Light ads where the yahoos question pro-football coaches. Again, they’re not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Locally in the mid-Atlantic, MASN has been airing their “defining moment” series to promote Orioles and Nationals games on TV. In this series, MASN presents typical fans standing in front of a video display that looks a little like Camden Yards’ scoreboard raving about something that makes them worship their hometown team. The selection of characters provides a broad cross section ethnically, by age, and gender supposed to show the wide appeal of baseball. Fair enough, but obviously most of them were white males from teen to golden years.
How could they find such obnoxious specimens to represent Chesapeake area baseball fans? We’ll even go as far to say that the Washington Nationals fans are definitely more appealing than the Orioles fans. While watching these ads, it wasn’t hard to think of those folks out at the ball yard who think they are the world’s greatest and smartest fans ever to show up with their sacred Elysian Fields before them sitting way too close for comfort who are all too eager to engage every paying customer sitting near them as subjects to their lectures about all they know (or truly don’t know) about baseball as if the very fate of mankind rested on their words. One could also think of the boorish blabber mouth at the local watering hole or sports bar who won’t stop blabbering in a loud obnoxious voice acting like everyone in the facility is his best buddy as long as those persons just quietly nod and bob like a bobble head as long as the self-appointed sports expert feels some kind of enabler’s support for his blathering. These are the kinds of folks, as so well depicted in these ads who make the unwilling subject of their rants just think, “Where can I run and hide?”
If fans made the association these are the kind of people who pack the stands at the ballparks in Baltimore and DC, is it any wonder attendance is so low?
Advertising has always run spots that completely miss their marks, but there are certain trends today that give rise to particularly offensive advertisements. First, the media is so detached and elitist; it feels far superior to its patrons whether it’s how the media covers the news, its programming or advertising. Second, the culture of political correctness and identity politics has invaded Madison Avenue where it’s just as damaging as it is to Wall Street. The only certain result is bland mediocrity and intellectual vapidity.
The irony is the audience for sports consists largely of male viewers in the prime demographics where customers for everything from beer to pickup trucks to financial services are riveted to football, baseball, basketball, and hockey games, NASCAR races, and the PGA tour. Few audiences are more steady viewers. However, in this new multicultural society where all hell breaks loose every time someone of a particular identity is offended, the only people who are allowed to be portrayed as idiots are white men or very attractive blonde females. Yes, men are the dum-dums who depend on their daughters to know when they need to touch up their gray hair and learn how to tie their neckties. Of course look at the burglars portrayed in ads for home security systems. They’re all white guys from 20-40 generally needing a shave. Imagine if an African American were portrayed as a home intruder?
Get the picture. Soon we’ll have the technology to push a button on our TV’s to program in quickie little videos that we can punch up every time there’s an ad break during our favorite telecasts. What device is more personally empowering than the remote control?
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