You people are beasts

WELL.

I'd try explaining my lengthy absence from this blog, but I doubt anyone reading it remembers that I'm a contributor. Even I forgot until recently. Still, I suppose I owe you people something. This video is a good approximation of what my life has been like since the last time I posted here.

Anyway, as some of you may know, I am an ad critic. Which means, among other things, that I am no stranger to hate mail. This was a particularly fun item:

With regard to your comment... "How they thought this would reflect well on the brand is anyone's guess. Maybe they downsized the people in charge of thinking this stuff through."
That, or maybe they just went for it. And didn't over think it. That or, they didn't make a decision based on fear. Whatever the case, they tried.
Of course, you wouldn't know anything about that. Instead, you -like all the other Ellsworth Tooheys of the world- do your best to justify your existence by doing nothing more commenting on other's efforts. Attempting to gain some modicum of self worth with your smug and glib little quips. Sad.
I'll be expecting the requisite glib/smug/ironic comment back from you. So, take your time. And make it a good one.

Ellsworth Toohey, by the way, was an art critic in The Fountainhead whose secret plan was to destroy excellence by enshrining mediocrity. That this dude finished The Fountainhead is no small feat; rather, it proves that he likes the smell of Ayn Rand's farts as much as she did. He's a stronger man than me in that respect, because I didn't get very far into that book before Rand's utter dogshit writing got the best of me.

But if he's serious about tearing down mediocrity, he should be fighting back-to-back with me against a marketing culture where "growing the brand" has become a justification for poorly conceived or pointlessly random ideas that do nothing for the product they're selling. The whole POINT of advertising is to sell things, after all, and merely raising awareness of a product is fruitless if said awareness is negative, or even opaque. The ad he's defending leaves me, the viewer, connecting the Walmart brand to a clown screaming at a room full of terrified kids. Not an inaccurate image, God knows, but not one that reflects well on Walmart. And brands do this ALL THE TIME.  It is a function of creative and artistic laziness that protects bad ideas at the expense of good ones (this Kodak spot is an example of what I think is a good one). If Captain Objectivism wasn't so busy getting his precious feelings hurt by strangers on the Internet, he would see that.

Also, I write for Adfreak to justify my existence at the expense of others? No, I work for money - Verizon doesn't accept justifications of my existence in lieu of payment, thanks. But I'd rather be Ellsworth Toohey, for all his faults, than yet another blowhard asshole who thinks he's John Galt.

WTF Theatre presents: Eagle Man

You know, Americans might very well be a nation of fat lazy blowhards with just enough money to buy guns and wish violent death upon anything that makes us uncomfortable, but you can't say we aren't marketing-savvy. Indeed, we're used to people trying to sell us stuff, and employing just about anything to do it; geckos, cavemen, C-list celebrities exploiting their "random pop culture reference" status, talking syrup bottles, cavemen again, and anthropomorphized money have all seen starring roles in commercials.

And that's just Geico. But if you thought their multiple simutaneous ad campaigns were as weird as it got, allow Eagle Man to shove you further down the rabbit hole.



"Down the rabbit hole" turns out to be appropriate phrasing, because whoever designed that thing took a page from Lewis Carroll's near-constant morphine delirium. Who on earth would accept car insurance from an egg that some colossal male bird squeezed out on their hood? Show me someone who would, and I will throw a net on them until they can be strapped into a coat that makes them hug themselves.

So of course they made a sequel, in which Eagle Woman lays eggs full of car insurance (in mid-flight, even) all over some guy who looks like Dante from Clerks.



The mind reels. It really does.