More stupid advertising

I have to catch public transport everyday. As a result I am exposed to a hell of a lot of advertising - at the stations, on trams, in trams, on buses and even on metcards. Lately, Flinders St. Station has been covered with ads for commercial radio broadcaster Triple M and their AFL Football commentary team. You know the drill; a picture of 5 blokey looking men accompanied by 'witty' slogans. The problem is that these ads don't make any sense at all, as I shall endeavour to illustrate. There are 3 different slogans used on these advertisements:

1. "Sorry, we couldn't afford a stylist." You know what? I'll bet they did employ a stylist for the making of these ads. I realise that they're going for a blokey image but no one does anything in the media today without a stylist on hand. I'll bet they employed someone to make sure their subjects looked blokey in the exact blokey style the station wanted. Are we seriously expected to believe that they were willing to do the photo shoot with whatever outfits these guys happened to throw on that morning? They're spending thousands of dollars on their ad campaign and plastering them on billboards all over Melbourne. When you're faced with the prospect of having to rely on the dress-sense of AFL football commentators, you'd be a fool not to hire a stylist.

2. "Who said boy bands were dead?" Criticism #1. They're not boys. Criticism #2. They're not a band. The 'joke' doesn't work on any level. Does anyone even proof-read this drivel before it gets approval? People that work in commercial radio are so funny! All they have to do is mindlessly drop a daggy or retro pop culture reference and they'll have me in stitches! Not.

3. "Where moustaches are still cool" It's quite striking to notice that only 1 guy out of the 5 guys in the picture has a moustache. If moustaches are so cool, how come only 1/5 of the people featured in the ad actually has one? It's like looking at a group of people, 4 of whom have moustaches, 1 of whom doesn't and remarking 'That must be where not having moustaches is still cool". I think I understand what they're going for here (see 'daggy or retro pop culture reference' above) but it hardly seems worth mentioning a feature possessed by a tiny minority of their commentary team.

So what point am I making (if any)? These ads are demonstrably inane and are presumably indicative of the audience Triple M wants to attract. Ask yourself if you want to be part of that audience.

Climate change is so hot right now

I couldn't help noticing a certain advertisement plastered over almost every tram in Melbourne that exhibited a brand of vacuousness usually unseen even in the particularly vacuous world of advertising. The offending advert features various androgynous clothes-horses lounging around in designer rags casually enjoying a planet with a drastically increased sea level and temperature. The caption coyly states that its clothes are 'global warming ready'. Presumably the ad is designed to appeal to people whose greatest concern for the future of this planet is the continuing availability of 'fashionable' clothes - the kind of demographic who only know the term 'global warming' at all because they accidentally overheard it on a news break during Big Brother Up Late. Climate change is a serious issue, not just some buzz word to be regarded in the same vein as the latest sitcom catchphrase ('Anthropogenic increase in the earth's average temperature? What the?'). I'm not saying that we have to be deathly serious (I do have a sense of humour - how hilarious was that 'what the?' gag in the last sentence?) but I fear that this sort of media simplification reflects attitudes that already exist in a large section of society. It's as if it's enough to just know these catchy little soundbites without actually understanding the underlying premise that they represent. It's like that guy at work who thinks he's making a very political joke when he makes fun of John Howard for being bald. Delve a little deeper into the issue. Don't be the kind of mindless shemp who sees these media contrivances and assumes that they might be saying something meaningful when they are in fact just superficially cashing in on issues with real relevance.