Television Commercials and the Decline of Western Civilisation, Part 3

First off, I gotta do something about that title if I keep coming back to it.

Anyway, this post is less of a rant than my two previous posts on the subject. Actually more of a validation of those posts… I was perusing the discussions on Plastic this past week and a couple stories caught my eye. They tie in pretty well with what I had discussed earlier, so I thought I’d share:

First story was about a new patent application for a technology that would prevent viewers from skipping commercials on their digital video recorders – or prevent viewers from changing the channel during commercials while viewing live. Pretty insidious sounding… but on the upside there are a number of reasons this wouldn’t actually be used – not the least of which is that consumers are highly unlikely to buy a product that adds new restrictions to use, if there is an alternative (including older technology). So hopefully it’s just a ‘defensive patent’ intended never to be used. But the story and discussion were pretty revealing about the attitudes of the broadcasting and advertising industry. Basically, you will watch the ads, or you are stealing. Even getting up to use the washroom during a commercial break seems barley tolerated.

My personal solution, or challenge rather, is as follows: if you want people to watch your ads, make better ads. A good advertisement, even for a crappy product, will at least keep me entertained and get my attention so that if the product is a good one, it will gain my consideration. I won’t avoid good ads. Hell, I’ve even paid to watch them on occasion. The Cannes Lions advertising award winners, shown annually, are always entertaining. If I can squeeze in a viewing of them, I’ll gladly pay the equivalent of a movie ticket to watch. Only problem is, they’ve become so popular in the last few years, I’m rarely on top of things enough to buy tickets before they sell out, because too many other people want to see them. Broadcasters, are you paying attention?

Second story was on one of the product groups I’ve seen advertised way too much recently – multi-blade razors. From the discussion it is clear I am not the only one who thinks these have gone beyond overkill. And I’ve learned way more than I ever needed to know about the razor industry. Some tidbits:
- In addition to the 5-blade razor being predicted by the Onion a year in advance, the 3-bladed razor was similarly predicted in a fake ad on SNL’s first episode ever in 1975.
- While the 2-blade razor was an improvement over the single blade, the rest are pretty much useless. The Mach 3’s benefits apparently stemmed from its much improved blade technology, but would’ve worked fine with 2; the third was added pretty much as a marketing gimmick, but backfired when it produced a proliferation of multi-blade competitors.
- Not only do shaving ads attempt to convince consumers to buy the latest in technology, they also attempt to promote shaving behaviour that minimises razor longevity and thus increases consumption.
- And of course, additional blades are pretty much an inevitability. Any attempts at satire involving an N-bladed razor are doomed to become reality at some point in the future.

So I guess, at least there’s hope in that other people are recognising the same problems… and crappy ads and crappy products still only need to appeal to a subset of the population to work, not the majority. But still… I’ve got this fear that at some point in the not-so-distant future, the corporo-fascist regime will push through laws requiring viewers to sit with their eyes pried open as they are forced to watch commercials for the latest 15-blade razor… am I just being paranoid?