Duck season
My editor at The Slovenia Times says that the next issue will be in every goodie bag at The Golden Drum competition, a huge advertising festival in Portorož.
Does anyone have an idea what I should write about? Advertising's future? Its discontents? Its "meaning"? Its phenomenological nature?
Please forward this request to anyone who has an opinion on advertising. I need motivation and direction. Nine months of advertising-free living has basically made me a fossil.
My DEADLINE is Wednesday at 4pm CEST, that's 10am New York time.
Does anyone have an idea what I should write about? Advertising's future? Its discontents? Its "meaning"? Its phenomenological nature?
Please forward this request to anyone who has an opinion on advertising. I need motivation and direction. Nine months of advertising-free living has basically made me a fossil.
My DEADLINE is Wednesday at 4pm CEST, that's 10am New York time.
posted by J Wilson at Monday, September 26, 2005
3 Comments:
you're in a sorry state of affairs if you read my opinion of advertising, since I don't know anything about it...But someone at the UN told me to say something...
I like Rocky Pina's biography: Rocky left Cuba for social/political reasons, specifically to pursue advertising, the mother tongue of capitalism.
I'm slightly paraphrasing.
I'm not sure the nature of non-state sponsored advertising in Slovenia either. In fact, I don't know that I can point the country out on a map.
I do know that in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, by Hernando Desoto, he explains that everywhere that there are totalitarian and/or communist (and clearly delinates the big differences between the two) governments, there is a thriving black market. That you can get anything you want anywhere in the world, if you have the cash, and that generally speaking, everyone knows this.
So, why advertise, once it becomes legal? Everyone knows who has what. Everyone knows what will happen to the price and uses of a product when it hits the shelves. They know the pros and the cons. They know how to take care of things more too, since there are no refunds and guarantees on the black market.
So, why bother?
Enter Adspeak.
I just got asked by Verizon why I'm getting rid of my DSL. I have internalized non-negative marketing speak: "I'm simply looking for an alternative means of internet."
Not, "I'm canceling because you suck."
Advertising (copywriting), levels the playing field by quickly coming up with the right codewords for features, functions, uses, all details about a product or service. What that does is to make consumers work really hard to decipher these codes. In fact, if you don't pay attention, if you slough off the goofy AdSpeak before buying, you'll get screwed.
It's a new kind of black market, where the old market was quickly found out. It's not about obfuscation, but rather about highly refined pinpointing of differentiating features of client's products and services.
So, "reliability" with regards to high-speed internet service might mean "not really on 24/7, but pretty much always on", whereas "dependablity" might mean "on 24/7, as opposed to the other guys, who say they're 'reliable' because you can't depend on them, but merely 'rely' on them."
Or something like that.
And they'll focus group that shizzizzle til it hurts.
And there will be laws about when you can say a product is "reliable" and when it's "dependable"...
and legal battles will ensue.
But to copywriters, the difference between reliable and dependable is really really big.
Does Slovenia even think like this?
Is it a "beautiful" country? Or a "lovely" country?
-R
oh. wait. there is advertising there already...
The future of advertising.
here's a good quote: "You don't need TiVo to make millions of people stop watching your ads."
I think you should write about this: a band I love is playing; I haven't heard the opening act, so I go to their website, where I find this self-description: "Turkish Queen is an experimental duo out of Boston, MA. They formed in the sultry summer of 2002, through a mutual love of sound, texture, and technical wizardry. Their cinematic melodies wrap around your ears like a slow-creeping vine, invoking an eerie sea of sound. Evocative female vocals reveal themselves like a lifeline on a palm touched by sepia-stained fingers, portraying intriguing characters and the human condition." Um. Maybe they should have hired a copywriter. Maybe they did.
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