Tag: advertising

Why yes, yes it is.

I heard a carnival barker-style bellowing ad on the car radio yesterday while listening to the all-news AM station. It was the usual mortgage broker appeal to refinance, this time with the added warning that rates were going up. The ad concluded:

“It’s the biggest no-brainer in the history of Mankind!

HAZARDOUS ELK

I heard a Canadian Tourism Ad on the radio in my car yesterday. The ad tried to put me in a sound picture in which I was on an amazing golf course playing the game of my life while sweet birds sang etc and an elk walked on to the course. And the tag was something like “and you don’t mind an interruption in your game, because an ELK IS ON THE COURSE!” Followed by the call your travel agent spiel.

I’m not sure what your reaction might be, but were I on a golf course and an elk appeared, I would run like hell. Who wants to get kicked to death? Is there a baby elk over there? Wow these things are pretty fast OH GOD THE ANTLERS

There was another ad right afterwards in which I was instructed to picture myself paddling a kayak or canoe on Lake Louise having a peak experience. That didn’t sound so bad except for the Implied Insects, which are universal in traveling anyhow.

But no elk for me, please.

I thought we were using more sophisticated stuff these days.

From the job ad for the “Tech Expo Top Secret 2007” job fair for “security-cleared professionals”:

Catapult your job search by meeting nearly every major employer in the defense industry over 2 days. Federal Agencies & Government Contractors are actively hiring at our TECHEXPO Job Fair held within AFCEA’s WEST Conference in San Diego, CA. Even if you’re just surveying the job landscape, this is an excellent place to learn about available opportunities nationwide.

I have surveyed the landscape, sir! Permission to catapult!

The world of drug ads again

Another visit to the doctor means more scanned-in drug ads! Hurray! First off we have the “Healthy Lifestyles” brochure from the Lilly company. It’s actually not for one of their drugs but for a “stop eating so damn much” plan that is no doubt intended to go with a diet pill or something. They were attempting to show the bountiful beauteous cornucopia of joy that is a HEALTHTY LIFESTYLE! but the cultural resonance of the picture they chose is unfortunate. I cropped it to the “good part.”

eden who

Next we have

The Lilly people are also advertising their antidepressant Cymbalta. Men have ADD and women have depression, so their model for this ad is the typical middle-aged middle-class woman considering her symptoms. I cropped off the top which asks which of these are symptoms of depression? and the bottom that tells you to talk to your doctor about all of your symptoms, no doubt because the list they have adds up to a prescription for Cymbalta. I like it with just the middle bit:

symptoms of buying our stuff

More great stuff from the new age magazine

  1. The Enlightenment Card is here! It’s a Visa credit card that gives you points as you buy towards… enlightening things. I want to tell the Dalai Lama about it so I can get one of those long cheerful Tibetan laughs out of him.
  2. Holistic dentistry as a general concept is probably a great idea, because dentists so often are the ones who see medical problems first. However, I’d avoid the madman with the extensive psychoceramic chart (270k jpg) showing how your teeth control your lungs, liver, and everything else.
  3. Do you need an exorcist? Why no, I don’t. I especially don’t need one who uses Comic Sans. Considering their client base, though, they’re wise to demand the $300 up front. Customer service must be a bitch there.
  4. There is an ad for a psychic clairvoyant medium named Zack Havoc. I don’t want anyone who identifies with “Havoc” messing with the spirit world. That’s a name for a late 1990s extreme sports/fake punk DJ guy, not a medium. His Corporate Reading services include “Product Placement.” Does that mean he will put your product in his readings? Also “Employee Moral” and “Theft of Services.” His political services include “demographic populace” and “legislative zeitgeist.” Okay I’m done now.
  5. Energy Healing for Pets. Yes, the url is psychicvet.com. There is a kind of Pet Tarot for sale there, too. Are we really this rich? I guess we are.

The rest of the ads are mostly for unlicensed psychotherapy via loopholes like “life coaching” and “psychic counseling. There are also ads for fraudulent medicine of various kinds, including a claim for total herbal cure of diabetes; that’s lethal. There are also quite a few pyramid schemes, including ones that produce more of the fake psychotherapists by using counseling to recruit more counselors. The smell of brimstone is evident.

I found one really cool thing in the entire magazine. There is an Organic macrobiotic Japanese food lunch truck roaming Los Angeles. Okay, that’s just awesome, having a lunch truck pull up outside your job and getting edamame, soba noodle salad, some gyoza, and a hot cup of genmai-cha. Salut! Or whatever you say in Japanese.