June 23, 2004

• canadians are suckers for viral marketing.
• probably because they actually have good advertising. american advertising is so damn dull and boring.
• ...don't forget patronizing, sensational, and faux-inspirational.
• Corg-Lite was a Canadian Food Snack product made from Chipped, Mostly Pure-Breed Dogs. It had 14 grams of protein, only 2 carbs, and a shelf-life longer than Walt Disney's frozen head. Corg-Lite,or "El C-L" as the kids call it, caught the eye in its distinctive SkyBlueBox, and was sold alongside Slim-Jim and other meat selections in the Impulse Aisle of the local Qwikee-Gas-N-Gourmet store. I haven't seen it in years! You?
• canadians are suckers for viral marketing. can someone explain to me exactly what viral marketting is because i didn't think this ad fell into that category... simply because it's been airing on tv for months already. it's not something that was only shown online, or "leaked" by the advertising company as something that wasn't supposed to air. so how does this ad qualify as viral...? patronizing, sensational, and faux-inspirational huh...? it's just funny, nothing else. just where is that wedge anyway...? hehe.
• [bananas for Korou]
• t r a c y- Isn't it all viral, though? I had never heard of "vim". Although Korou is my homeboy, he has managed to infect us with product awareness, branding; contaminated our shared interpretive frameworks, shared expectations; and introduced the subjective, socially-constructed norms, values, and social identities of that company's choosing. (Or rather, their PR firm's choosing.) The commercial also makes insidious use of the "joke" as a structural frame. And if the "mom" represents you, and if you aren't using said product, then the "joke" (or stigma) is on you. Or me. Or whoever. *My* joke, however, was on you. Not me. As Canadians are one of the last ethnic groups (excluding Inuits) that one can safely make fun of, I enjoy getting a few trollish barbs in whenever possible. I believe it's my subconscious way of paying Canada back for every useless beaver or moose coin that I unknowingly receive from asshat cashiers, periodically. The "patronizing, sensational, and faux-inspirational" remark was w/ regards to drivingmenuts' comment, i.e., American advertising. Sorry, I should have been more clear, eh?
• I want more advertising! It veddy goot!
• I don't believe I just watched that.
• I just spent 20 minutes trying to find out how to turn off VIM's autoindent "feature" that keeps messing up the tabbing when I paste code into the window. Why are you all looking at me like that? (It's :set paste)
• can someone explain to me exactly what viral marketting is because i didn't think this ad fell into that category... Once someone posts it online and tells other people to see it, it becomes viral. I witnessed this piece of ... *video* because MoFi often has interesting links, not because my TV was on. It's a person-to-person, word-of-mouth transmission. It's no accident that this movie is up online on some superfast server, and you can bet that somewhere, some marketer is paid to email this out to the cool kids, who they hope will send it onward. Viral. May I briefly preach the gospel of not posting ads as items of interest/entertainment? These people have serious creative budgets. That's how they're able to come up with 30 second video spots that are mildly amusing. Go figure. I sometimes enjoy a really goond one, but this one didn't even crack the corner of my lips. The bar for this kind of thing should be really, really high. Or at least label it.
• if it's all viral then why use the term...? surely it's meant to signify that there's been some sort of subterfuge on the part of the advertising co./product manufacturer. on preview - oh ok your points make sense scarabic, thanks. i'm generally bemused by how hard they work at selling their crap, as it seems to me that advertising has become rather impotent over the years. like a barking dog, you just learn to tune it out. but it seems a very american thing to take advertising personally, to feel harmed by it, to give it power.
• Bananas for Korou. I agree with tracy. If advertising bothers some people on mofi maybe we should start placing a warning next to it like the flash warning. I don't mind seeing advertising if its cleverly done.
• I don't mind seeing advertising if its cleverly done. Me neither, but I'm going to agree with scarabic that this one falls pretty far short of "clever." At least we could get a decapitated cat or something. Maybe there should be a label, although it's not that it's advertising that I object to, it's that (imho) this one was kinda... meh.
• ...take advertising personally? Yes. Feel harmed by it? Yes. Give it power? No, no. Trying to do the opposite. Why? - Advertising is propaganda. Instead of patriotism & hate, however, this particular piece of advertising is promoting the use of their toxic chemicals, as well as their specific worldview. Both can be clever, funny, and/or enjoyed ironically. I guess that helps. - Billboards are a fucking eyesore. (nearly all of which are "0wn3d" by only three companies: Clear Channel, Viacom, & Lamar) It's pollution. And you can't even turn them "off", like a TV. Printed flyers, bus stop benches, sides of buses, taxicab doors and roof mounts, stadiums, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, product placement.... it's all spam. The advertising hasn't become impotent, all the people buying penis pumps and pills and padded bras have! Someone is buying all that shit, otherwise companies would've stopped spending so many million$ on it. - Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring; BananaPhone! That shit gets in your head whether you want it to or not. The onus is on you to get it out. - They keep telling us... that having a receding hairline makes you an ugly laughingstock, your breasts and penises are too small, you are way fatter than Barbie / not built like He-Man, (or we are too skinny), how 'bout a cig?, new rule: you can't wear pink this season, your teeth *still* aren't white enough, get the deluxe model, your pussy smells like shit, your armpits smell, too; your wrinkles make you look geriatric, aren't you afraid of dying?, nerds get zits, where's your white picket fence? you don't have one yet?, don't you *love* fucking?, you are a loser for driving that POS car, women with leg hair look like monkeys... get rid of yours!, wouldn't you like to be taller?, ladies: paint your faces because you are not as pretty as this photoshopped chick is. If someone sat next to you on the bus everyday and spewed all that garbage at you, you would smack him with your hockey stick! And rightly so! You can accept or reject all this bullshit, but you cannot ignore it. - Cultural hegemony: Advertising as an institution subordinate to the interests of the dominant classes, the business elites, functions to create consumers out of producers, to teach the masses of people, through various techniques, to see the consumption of commodities as an integral part of their habits, indeed, of their personalities. Advertising serves to expand the consumption of the commodities produced under the control of the ruling class elites. Through the appropriation of meaning systems held by the mass consumers, and the mythification of those meaning systems along the lines of the commodity form, advertising obtains the participation and collaboration of the mass consumers in the values of consumption necessary for the direction of society's development as desired by the class interests of the business elites. In part it achieves this end through offering a false democracy where the consumer may exercise his/her freedom of choice not in a truly political manner but rather by making any of a number of consumption choices. [plagiarized from here; more inside] - Because my country has sold its soul to corporate power. Because consumerism has become our new religion. Because a small group of neocons has hijacked our national agenda. And because we
• Fry: So you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams? Leela: Of course. Fry: But, how is that possible? Farnsworth: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. Although in reality it's not liquid, but gamma radiation. Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing. Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines...and movies...and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written in the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!
• That commercial was great.
• That Bananaphone thing was a Raffi song, wasn't it? ...unless he's part of some shady imperialist conspiracy. You never know about the jolly ones with guitars.
• Not counting this one, there are seven Front Page Posts today (as of the time of this comment). Five of them contain ads on the linked page. One of them (not this one) is a blatant advertisement for a book. My point? I guess my point is 'Unclench'. If you're going to feel abused every time you see an advertisement, you're in for a very angst-filled existence, my friends. I know there's a few here who abhor capitalism, but let the rest of us enjoy the video clips, and let us make up our own minds whether we find it amusing or not. So put me down as a "no" for warning labels.
• advertising, yes... for several, personal reasons i concur with many others that i'd prefer it to be identified as such when occurring as a fpp. otherwise one tends to adapt the mefi style that i use, of reading the comments first, to assess content, before going to the fpp and avoiding any unwanted surprise....imho... thus spoiling the intended rythym of reading . wedge...when you say 'it's my subconscious way of paying Canada back for every useless beaver or moose coin that I unknowingly receive from asshat cashiers, periodically., do you not think your coins aren't a bit of a pain for us also? coins are mostly good for meters and vending machines and yours simply are useless to us. ain't worth the tin they're stamped in, pardon my saying. at least the shiny stuff doesn't scratch off the surface of ours! /she says in a somewhat proper and somewhat righteous, canadian manner. and a sorta curious george question...why do you see us as 'ethnically fun' to make fun of? not that it bothers me, just wondered on an abstract level. and )))'s for your critique on advertising. may i copy it?
• "clap" "clap" "clap" "clap" Bravo! Wedge Bravo! Being one who, more often than I like to admit, finds myself glued to the Boob tube I can't help but feel intellectually raped by the crap they call advertising these days. On the other hand when I see a funny or witty ad, deep in my fight against the propaganda/commercialism machine heart, I let a wee chuckle escape and appreciate that somewhere someone is trying to do a good job at being creative.
• Thinking about the whole corporate/sold out thing: I would actually rather give my money to the guy/gal down the street to, let's say, keep my house clean. But then again, he or she would be using the same toxic chemicals to clean that I would, so aside from some redistribution of wealth (ha-ha, what wealth) I haven't achieved much else. If the advertising is particularly amusing, I don't mind so much. Creative advertising is not necessarily a bad thing - sure, the product may not be so great, but in the face of everything else going on in the world, we could sure use some laughs right about now. Yep, billboards suck. So do lots of other things that are way more up close and personal. Like not having a job. But billboards do suck. Cultural hegemony - what? Break that down into realworld terms. I get it, but it's just as boring as most of the advertising and frankly, I have groceries to buy. Plus, it sounds like a load of horse twaddle all dressed up fancy-like. It may be true, but that's what it sounds like. "I'm being oppressed! Come see the oppression inherent in the system!" We sold out long before the neocons were around. I'd say sometime around the early 1800's. Selling out is nothing new.
• Christ, I thought it was pretty funny. Warnings? It took 30 seconds of your time and no harm was done. If you hate it so much then you could have waited a day and seen what the comments looked like and it would have been obvious what the post was about. That's what I do if I'm unsure of a link. I'm with rocket88, *unclenches keyboard*.
• Well... Genial, Rocket: I mean, how does providing a label prevent anyone from enjoying the link if they choose to click it? Obviously plenty of people would rather not see advertising, for varied reasons. And they feel strongly about it. I think we should be writing more descriptive FPP's anyway. I know a lot of people are cryptic in their descriptions in order not to ruin the surprise or whatever, but... shrug. The original context of this would have been on a television, and the surprise would've been the audience thinking it was a movie trailer, not a soap commercial. One of my pet peeves is people linking stuff on blogs and the only description offered is "OMG THIS IS COOL, GO HERE". And I usually don't.
• Oh Korou, not to say at all that this was a bad post or anything. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise, and I typically click on commercial type links because of professional interest...
• Thert are many interesting, technically impressive, or simply way funny ads. I like to watch those. Hell, I hoard and burn them to CDs. This one was worth a chuckle, but as soon as I show it to a couple friends, it goes to the trash.
• your pussy smells like shit, your armpits smell, too; I'd like to see that advert combo.
• I had never heard of "vim". Well, Vim was a pretty ubquitious product here about ten years ago. A little less conspicuous nowadays, because abrasive cleaners aren't popular anymore here. It's a pretty amusing ad. I think alot of people have developed a kind of immunity to advertisements. I like seeing ads from other countries, there's a cultural difference which I enjoy comparing to the ads from the same companies I see at home.
• *struggles back up to chair from floor Whew! Wedge, that was a good'un. Monkeyfilter: Patronizing, sensational, and faux-inspirational
• Wurwilf- yes, it was a reference to this thread. So this Raffi, he is Canadian? dxlifer- ...because black, jew, and gay jokes are pretty taboo, and usually in very poor taste. Unless you happen to be Chris Rock, Larry David, or Dan Savage, respectively. Canadian jokes, however, are always fair game. I don't know why; I've never totally understood political correctness. The white trash redneck (US Southerners) demographic is also a safe group to make fun of. Perhaps this is because there is no Redneck Anti-Defamation League? Q: Why do Canadians do it doggy-style? A: So they can both watch the hockey game! ::rimshot:: /thank you, thank you. i'll be here all week.