@ey_tony - I’m curious as to when adverts were ever quality and would love to hear which ads you’re referring to and/or which era might be cited as the “golden age” of “quality” adverts. Similarly,
@guineafowl21 which adverts used to be more successful at extolling the virtues of a product and or their practical uses? I’d genuinely be interested to know, especially if there were more of them compared to the inane back then, which seems to be the claim. Perhaps they were reflective of the kinds of products sold then compared to now? Perhaps they were before my time; although I’m guessing we won’t go as far back as the cigarette adverts that promoted – overtly or covertly – the healthiness of smoking? I’m going to guess that there’s always been a mixture of adverts that either:
1. Have nothing to do with the product, but have a “style” aimed at a target audience, and most likely irritable to those outside of that audience; or
2. Say something about the product that is in reality meaningless (if improvements in making “whites whiter” are true and progress has continually been made over the decades, our clothes would be so white you’d see them from space!).
Then or now, personally I think it’s more important to think about the company in question whose advert it is. Chances are that many or most, having the money to advertise on TV, will not stand up to scrutiny, and perhaps that should be the target of our vitriol rather than subjective views on whether the style of the advert tickles us or not. To use what feels wholly inappropriate a phrase for adverts, beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
Perhaps another of the benefits to companies who pile millions into advertising is the deflection that occurs. Much like how many were obsessed with Matt Hancock’s snog and Boris’ hair a few years back (thanks for that, MSM), here we are irritated by the Dove or Halifax advert, while that’s really the very least of the problem with Dove and Halifax. If we can’t look passed the surface and see into something deeper, perhaps we all should’ve gone to specsavers?
Chomsky has a lot to say about advertising in a wider context, and says it a lot better than I can. I think this is well worth a listen:
I’ll pick out a quote from the end of the conversation:
“…a market economy is supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices, that's what we're taught our economy is. Turn on the television set and take a look at the content, the ads. Are they trying to create informed consumers making rational choices? I mean, if we had a market economy, if there was an ad, it would be an announcement by – say – Ford Motor Company: here are the characteristics of the cars we’re producing next year, here's what consumer review says about them… That would create informed consumers making rational choices. It's not what you see. There's huge efforts to try to create irrational consumers, uninformed consumers making irrational choices to undermine market economies and to turn people into people who may even believe that what they want is to sit on the couch and watch television, but it's not what they want as human beings”
ASIDE: I think it’s also interesting to note the power adverts can have. Those bl00dy nodding Churchill dogs that used to be in the back window of many cars, meerkat teddies, etc etc. It even invades our everyday languague. Such is the intrusiveness of adverts. I still use phrases from adverts of my childhood, let alone more modern ones. And I hate the bl00dy things!
