Thursday, July 10, 2008

This will bring you back to our drunken disagreements in L's Brooklyn living room...

Well, i finally found my way to a computer with sound and thus finally heard the yogurt post. I figured i should just create a new post, as the comment section of that one might not be viewed any more.

I have to say, as usual: Ich bin verwirt. All ads are aimed to target audiences. Watch daytime tv: its all cleaning and food and kids stuff w/ women in the ads. Watch manly programing (like football, which we all know i watch a lot of but am still not talking about due to the endless, burning heartache from last winter) and the beer and car ads are all aimed toward and about men. And, frankly, if i were a man i would find them way more offensive than this yogurt commercial. And really, it is women who buy this stuff more. And probably need it. Though, eating yogurt 5 days a week has not stopped the monthly 4 straight days i spend having diarrhea due to my stupid "womanly" problems. Thought maybe the cyber world would like to know about this...

I digress.

So, i ask, what is the anger directed towards? You mentioned the women in the ads, but if someone offered to pay me $30,000 to be in one of those ads (or any ad for that matter) i would run to the filming studio. Any money made from ads is more than likely thousands of dollars more than my yearly salary. Hell, I'd probably do it for a few thousand.

Is it the company? Because you really can't blame a corporation for wanting to get the most bang for its advertising buck by targeting ads to the most likely audience. Better corporate profits help society through dividends and the wealth-inducing flow of capital goods! Ya boyz!

Is it society? This makes a little more sense to me, but after 3 years of living in my neighborhood i find it shocking that our society isn't even more ignorant and dysfunctional than it already is. [Ooops! snob alert. Don't be hating. Move here first.]

Any how, i sincerely wasn't really sure what was upsetting, so i thought i'd start a little dialog. Much like that fun one we had about the emes chair. j


4 comments:

smear said...

Oh, and a footnote: the Master Giddens mentioned in the article i linked to is the man that my landlord has clean my gutters, do fix-it repairs in my home and power wash the house. j

Gregor Mendel said...

I'm Gregor Mendel, and I approve of your post. Also, there are several times i've been watching the channel Spike, watching something like the A-team or Ultimate fighter or that japanese game show where the people do stupid stuff to hurt themselves adn it's dubbed over with funny, offensive american voices, and the commercials are for tampons. really? I mean come on, advertise somewhere else! And yes, I am offended when I see men enjoying coors lite (Silverbullet!) or the Champagne of beers, Miller High-life. I feel like we're 3000 BC and someone just said 'hey, i can piss on this yeast/barley combo and drink it in a few days, it tastes good'.

smear said...

i just thought the video was funny.

and the women in that commercial (esp. the dykey one) just annoy the shit out of me, hence the anger. i definitely agree about the men's commercials-- i would be completely offended by them if i were a guy. "i'm a man, so i'm a complete meathead retard who likes to be told what's manly by my television."
what's extra funny, i think, is that my coworker saw the video and commented that her husband refuses to eat yogurt because he thinks it's woman food. nice work, yogurt commercials. *L

smear said...

Eeek, I am supposed to direct my anger? Toot. No, for me it’s rage inducing- or even just eye roll inducing but called the former- (hyperbole alert!) in part for what I take Activia’s success to be indicative of. But I realize that is a really big old net. It’s as though people will buy anything…, hell if you put water in a bottle…oh, wait. So yeah, J, your point about society basically sums it up…


All this yougurty stuff doesn’t upset me as much as make me lament the glut of advertising and its requisite arsenal: the take our 10 day challenge, blah, pink dresses, hoodies, goofing on the husband who can’t find things in the fridge. And the fact that it worked, but hey.
Yogurt is ancient, global and has live cultures that do spiffy things for our bodies.
We don’t need this, it’s just packaging and a campaign targeted at non descript digestive problems. Activia as a brand isn’t all that new it has been around for 20+ yrs in Europe. But marketing for unseemly, digestive reasons- a new way to stigmatize, fix, brand and unite seems kinda frisky and new. And other things too. I can imagine lots of snoozeworthy meetings about whether the US (market) was ready for Activia…zzzz. I bought organic yogurt yesterday which cost $1 less Activia does on sale. I hate the mini packaging too, ugh. * K

“I'm not Great Grandma. I'm a young person, like you. I eat my yogurt from a tube.” Strongbad