There's a reason people want to
TIVO the shows and skip the
advertisements. The ads are annoying. They are often insipid and even
insulting to the
intellect of the
viewer. They suck. And yet,
agencies are paid multi millions of
dollars to
conceptualize,
design, and put together these little
bundles of
nuisance. Are they
incompetent? No, just
insidious.
First consider this: most ads are not aimed at you. Doesn't matter who "you" are, the fact is there are dozens of "niches" that the ad makers are looking to hit -- middle-aged middle-income
housewives, African American
tween girls, elderly retired men,
opera fans,
creationists,
NASCAR fans.... but in any case not at
you. Ads directed at
children are especially annoying, since their goal is not to get children to spend money that they don't earn and don't have, but to get children to harangue adults into spending.... and, well
naturally an ad aimed at convincing an eleven-year-old that they
must have some
toy or
treat will be signaling the urgency of this need with sounds and images that drive everyone else to distraction. On the other hand an outfit angling to
insure the elderly will churn out messages that play on rational late-life fears that come across as absurd to those still in their "
immortal" youth.
But there's an even worse end to it. Advertising is not
meant to be good, its goal is
effectiveness.
Fast food commercials may grate on your
soul, but they also plant that
seed in your
mind that, hours or days later as you drive by the slop shop, inveigles you to pop in for a dollop of self-gratification. A sufficiently annoying commercial will
get your attention and
nest in your
brain, a function better served by an awful screed than a ho-hum intelligent plea for your
patronage. So even that relative handful of ads that are
aimed squarely at you will probably be stupid and annoying by design.
I will throw in two
caveats -- locally made ads and recut ads. You know your local
car dealer is a cheap sonofagun, and beset with low
production values. He does not make suck commercials because some high-end ad agency focus-grouped their effectiveness, but because he can't
afford to have that done in the first place. But even he knows how to get your attention, which is what he is looking to do. So local ads are usually poorly put together garbage, instead of slickly put together garbage, which is at least a bit endearing. The other thing is, sometimes the extremely rare commercial that is professionally made and actually even enjoyable to watch gets recut for time. There's maybe a 60-second version and a 30-second version, but some enterprising
TV station wants to squeeze in more ads for the minute and makes their own 20-second version. They presume you've seen the whole ad before, so they want to remind you that you liked it without keeping intact the reasons you did.
But the
bottom line (and really "the bottom line" is all these people are thinking of, isn't it?) is that the ads in general just suck. On purpose. Because we, as a society, let them.