The commercials that are bugging me already

  • annoying-tv-commercial.jpgIt’s bad this year. I hardly watch any com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion, and when I do, I hardly ever sit through the com­mer­cials. There’s a mute but­ton on the remote and a pause but­ton (since I’ve got the dig­i­tal satel­lite thing) and the all-purpose on/off but­ton, and between those, it’s the rare time that I’m inert enough to actu­ally watch a TV com­mer­cial. So how bad is it that with three weeks left to go till Christ­mas, there are already some of them that I never need to see again. One spe­cific ad, one ad cam­paign and one whole genre of hol­i­day shop­per ads. And a par­tridge in a pear tree.

    .

    Annoy­ing mate­ri­al­ist child

    There’s an ad for Tar­get, I think, (Or maybe it’s Old Navy) where we have the quick mix-n-match shots of slightly-hysterical-looking young peo­ple desport­ing them­selves in dif­fer­ent vignettes. Now here, now there, always peppy, always adorned from head to toe in the right mer­chan­dise. And in the mid­dle of all this mani­a­cal gai­ety, there’s a pithy exchange between a woman and a lit­tle girl.

    The woman says, “Do you believe in Santa?” and the girl some­what sar­don­ically replies, “I believe in cash­mere.” And the woman bends an ador­ing look on the girl at about the same time as I’m address­ing the set and say­ing, “You what?! You lit­tle sprat, I’ll give you my foot in your back­side to believe in!”

    Prob­a­bly just as well I never had kids. But then, if I did, I think they’d know a lit­tle bet­ter than to go around quip­ping to adults in a bored voice about how they need to have the costli­est knits not just to wear but to believe in. That’d be a kid that I’d have wear­ing burlap to her senior prom for sure.

    Prob­a­bly best to move on.

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    Don’t be a jerk! Be a cog in the shop­ping machine!

    These ads by Visa started show­ing up even before the mad hol­i­day rush (you can see one HERE), but now they’re really in high gear. You have a lot of happy shop­pers mak­ing their way in a rather mechan­i­cal way through the process of com­plet­ing their pur­chases. There’s a sort of smooth, factory-precise feel to it, high­lighted by show­ing the whole scene from above so that we can see that, yes, every shop­per is pro­ceed­ing through check­out and tak­ing only their alloted time — no more and no less — while a happy sound­track keeps time. And, coin­ci­den­tally, they are all using a Visa card to pay for things. And then … dis­as­ter!

    Some dumb schlub wants to write a check or pay cash! That is NO good for our shop­ping machine. The sound­track stops abruptly. Other shop­pers cast aggrieved glances toward the ne’er-do-well. Acci­dents and spillage occur. We see that the clerk is try­ing his best to get the exchange done quickly, but it is all the fault of that self­ish Lud­dite who wouldn’t use plas­tic. Noth­ing is any good. There goes Christ­mas! The idiot even­tu­ally com­pletes his trans­ac­tion with a look that tells us that he is suit­ably hor­ri­fied and will never let it hap­pen again. And then the machine comes up to speed again and the voiceover tells us that Life Takes Visa.

    Now, I’m as fond of cap­i­tal­ism as the next per­son, and I hap­pen to use plas­tic con­stantly. But to tell those who use checks and cash that they’re the ones imped­ing progress is just crap. In a lot of the stores near me, my trans­ac­tion is the one that takes more time. It’s the other shop­pers who don’t have to wait for a machine to ver­ify their trans­ac­tion who go sail­ing through. So let’s not start dol­ing out Christ­mas para­noia until we’re sure where it’ll end up.

    And in any case, who wants to feel like their shop­ping expe­ri­ence is quite this robotic? Ugh! If it weren’t for the sound­track, it’d look like a scene from “1984.”

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    The crappy gift ad

    I just hap­pened to see one from Philips Norelco, but they’re not the only cul­prit — the ‘crappy gift ad’ has become a Christ­mas main­stay. It shows peo­ple on Christ­mas Day open­ing up presents that they obvi­ously don’t like. Often it’s not just one gift — our poor recip­i­ent opens up box after box, hold­ing up dull and weird things and wear­ing a pained expres­sion or mak­ing flat remarks that make it plain that he or she is now hav­ing a really sucky Christ­mas. And the mes­sage is clear. THIS is what will hap­pen to your near­est and dear­est if you don’t buy what we’re sell­ing in this com­mer­cial. Because after all, Christ­mas is all about stuff, right? It’s not really the thought that counts; it’s the stuff. And if you give lousy stuff, then your beloved spouse, para­mour or rel­a­tive will have a rot­ten Christ­mas. And you will be bad. And all will be wrong.

    I do see the humor in this com­mon expe­ri­ence, and some of these ads have a lot of fun with bad Christ­mas presents and the things you have to say to save the sit­u­a­tion. If these ads hadn’t mul­ti­plied so much in the past few years, I’d still be think­ing they were funny. As it is though, they just seem tacky to me. Every­one has got­ten less-than-magnificent presents in their life and every­one has given them. When that hap­pens, it doesn’t actu­ally ruin Christ­mas at all, because it really is the thought that counts. And some­times you find out that the gift that strikes you as odd or unin­ter­est­ing on first sight may turn out to grow on you. So why keep teach­ing peo­ple how to be shal­low and thought­less? We can usu­ally man­age that on our own, can’t we?

    Well, in any case, I sup­pose I should stop harp­ing on about silly com­mer­cials and get on with all the wrap­ping, bak­ing and dec­o­rat­ing I have to do.


    Related posts:

    1. Get­ting all Christmas-d up here
    2. 10:09 am — “I knew some­thing like this would hap­pen someday.”
    3. Decem­ber 27
    4. So are we doing “Merry Christ­mas” or “Happy hol­i­days” or what?

    December 7th, 2007 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 12.07.2007

    Dear Grace,
    Thank you for remind­ing me why I don’t miss TV. :)

  • Cather­ine K.

    I have to ring in with S-P on this one.

    The only TV I watch is about 10 min­utes worth of news and weather at 5:30 am before leav­ing for work. There aren’t many com­mer­cials in that short period, but I am amazed that they are all from car deal­er­ships. Per­son­ally, I find them quite irri­tat­ing — but it is inter­est­ing that the only com­mer­cials they run that early are for cars.

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