Listener Rant – Robert on Advertising
Holy CRAP! Robert, you are on a roll. Usually I ask permission before I publish but this was so well written and edited, I couldn’t help but put it directly on the site. Robert, you are the man!
Have you seen the new Comcast commercials? The ones where some dopey-looking person drones on and on in a conspicuously low-voiced, one note monotone with a psychedelic cartoon background moving in a frenzy behind them? Do you hate them? You should. They make me want to throw a squirrel through my TV screen. What I’m about to say is 100% the truth: If I am watching live, I will actually skip back 30 seconds on my DVR and watch the preceding ad just to avoid having to see or hear these rage-inducing, bile-raising, profanity-provoking corporate vomit piles. I ignore most commercials. I don’t believe any claim ever made in an advertisement. But once in a while, I will make note of a particular plug; not because I plan to purchase the subject of the promo, but because the advert in question ticks me off so much that I am sure to avoid the product/service at all costs!
I live in Canada. We don’t even have Comcast as a service provider. But their ads irritate me to such a degree that I almost want to move to the US, sign up for Comcast and then cancel on them just so that when they ask me why I am leaving, I could tell them it’s because of their infuriating commercials. In a way, I am thankful whenever one of these steaming loafs of big business excrement comes along; there are so many brands and services out there: it’s nice when one of them eliminates itself as an option. At least if I ever do move south of the border, I will have one less television provider to consider.
At this point, I have wasted enough words on Comcast, but ranting about their advertising got me thinking about a tangentially related topic: Personalized ads targeted at me based upon my viewing habits. More and more, I read about my ever growing online profile. Every click of my mouse sends information to advertisers, telling them my interests, my whims and my innermost dreams and ambitions. And they use this information to send me highly targeted bits of promotion with the assumption that I will be more likely to spend my money if they show me things in which I am already interested. But I actually worry for the capitalist society if this is the future of advertising. The reason I fret is because I cannot recall ever clicking on one of these supposedly targeted ads and I have a theory as to why that is so: My online activity centres around gathering information as well as entertainment. What is not reflected in my mouse clicking are my day-to-day, mundane purchases. I’ve never looked up toilet paper, toothpaste, soap or laundry detergent on the Internet. Yet, if you break down my annual budget, I spend more money per year on these necessities than I do on my hobbies. Daily, “boring” products like these are frequently advertised on television, but I do not see them in a pop-up or a banner ad at any of my favorite websites. And to be honest, there is a far greater chance that I will change my brand of toothpaste based on what I see in a commercial than the chance that I will choose my next speaker brand based on an advert. If the only ads I ever see are for products for which I have already searched on my own, how will I ever be made aware of products or services for which I do not even know to ask?
At the end of it all, money is only made if I lay out cash for a product or service provided to me. Showing me things I already know I like or amusing me doesn’t work to alter my buying habits. Instead of trying to cherry pick which ads to show me, the future of advertising would be much more appealing if I were able to eliminate certain promos. If I had only ever seen Comcast’s ad once and been able to block it out from ever desecrating my TV screen again, I might have actually considered their service (if I were ever to move to the US in the future). But as it stands, I can honestly say that companies have more to lose then they have to gain because if I already like a product, I will continue to buy it. The only thing an ad can do is give me a reason to start hating a brand.
Robert from Canada
Funny thing, I haven’t seen those ads. Now I’m gonna look for them, though. I maybe could bookmark the YouTube page and watch it before every podcast 😉 . Oh, and Robert, Google apparently is getting in this targeted ad game. The thing about Google, they may not be the first but when they do something, they generally do it right. This might be “right” in an “oh so wrong” way but they’ll probably be successful. The only thing I’m concerned about with your rant is the allusion to toilet paper. The last thing I need is that sort of “popup” on my browser!
Thanks Tom!
This goes against every fibre of my being, but here’s an example of the Comcast commercial:
http://tiny.cc/u6dQ9
Wow. That was great. I only wish I had thought of the line “Throw a squirrel through my TV”
One thing should be pointed out about advertising though is that there is actaully great value in presenting ads to existing customers. The key reason is that while you do not need to convince them to purchase your product for the first time, you do want them to be repeat consumers. Exposing existing customers to advertisments has a tendency to promote brand loyalty. So while I agree that it is more interesting to see information from new vendors, rest assured, those old vendors will hunt you down, strap you in a chair like Alex DeLarge, and continue to feed you their “message.”
My wife and I kinda like ’em.
I saw this commercial for the first time on YouTube and thought it was very artsy-looking but extremely droll. The droning singing got to me after the first few times… then it became just plain stupid.
The first time I heard it my ears puked it was definitely nauseating
I actually don’t mind this ad compared to normal comcast ads. Normal Comcast ads are sessions of blatant arrogance about their company and outright lies about their services, deliberately misleading consumers, implying they provide fiber optic internet, and unlimited downloads per month.
At least this is a departure from that.
I don’t have Comcast at all, but if I did, I think I’d have to kill myself after watching that ad. Yes, if my life is so boring and apparently worthless as those in the cartoonified world, I’d want to end my cartoonified existence. Tom, would you like me to fly down to Florida and help you cut down your neighbors trees so you can get a sat dish? Heck, you can even blame the whole thing on some insane guy from Iowa and claim you didn’t know what was going on!