{"id":46657,"date":"2019-01-27T03:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T08:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46657"},"modified":"2019-01-26T11:53:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T16:53:48","slug":"modern-advertising-wokeness-for-millennials-is-basically-corinthian-leather-for-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/27\/modern-advertising-wokeness-for-millennials-is-basically-corinthian-leather-for-the-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern advertising – “wokeness … for millennials, is basically Corinthian leather for the soul”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still not caught up on all my RSS feeds, so this Jonathan Kay<\/a> piece at Quillette<\/em> is more than a week old, which is why we’re selling it at half-price:<\/p>\n

… Coca-Cola doesn\u2019t make you smile. The \u201cRich Corinthian Leather<\/a>\u201d that Chrysler used to upholster car seats wasn\u2019t actually from Corinth. And smoking Virginia Slims doesn\u2019t actually mean \u201cYou\u2019ve come a long way, baby<\/a>.\u201d It probably just means you\u2019re going to die of lung cancer.<\/p>\n

But misleading as that Personna ad may have been, it had more substance than most modern commercials. At the very least, it purported to extol the actual physical quality<\/em> of the product being advertised \u2014 even if the evidence presented in support of that claim was thin. Coke, Chrysler and Virginia Slims (a 1960s-era spinoff of Benson & Hedges), on the other hand, were selling fairy tales based on happiness, wealth and liberation, respectively.<\/p>\n

A close Mad Men-era analogue to Gillette\u2019s new ad would be this Virginia Slims ad<\/a> from 1967. It starts with a woman in 19th-century clothing, staring mournfully at her feet while a sad tune plays. \u201cIt used to be, baby, you had no rights,\u201d intones a male voice saucily. \u201cNo right to vote. No right to property. No right to the wage you earned. That was back when you were laced in, hemmed in, and left with not a whole lot to do. That was back when you had to sneak up to the attic if you wanted a cigarette. Smoke in front of a man? Heaven forbid!\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In some respects, the act of watching that ad is a voyage to a distant land: It\u2019s not just that cigarette ads have been illegal in western countries for decades (the woman actually takes a puff \u2014 right there on TV<\/em>). But the very idea that \u201cwomen\u201d smoke with a small \u201cfeminine hand\u201d also would constitute its own sort of transphobic thoughtcrime. Nevertheless, the basic Madison Avenue impulse behind the ad is recognizable to modern eyes: There\u2019s this cool social trend out there. Let\u2019s present our product as part of that cool trend<\/em>. In the 1960s, the cool trend was empowering women. A half century later, it\u2019s hectoring men. In the 1960s, being progressive meant expanding the range of permissible behaviour. A half century later, it\u2019s about imposing constraints. In the 1960\u2019s, the puritans were the bad guys. Today, they\u2019re the ones setting the moral agenda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a bonus, he also walks you through a Marketing 101 course (at least, the few things you’d remember after taking a Marketing 101 course) in his local store:<\/p>\n

At my local Toronto pharmacy, a pack of eight Gillette \u201cFusion5\u2122 ProShield\u2122\u201d razors goes for $42.14 (all figures in U.S. dollars) \u2014 a staggering $5.27 per razor. These are displayed, of course, at eye level, since they provide the highest profit margin. Stoop down to waist level, and you will find a package of three quad-bladed cartridges\u2014in generic packaging, though they provide more or less the same quality shave as the Fusion5 \u2014 for just $2.26 per razor. And if you\u2019re willing to go down to ankle level, you can get a 10-pack of \u201cLife\u201d brand twin blades for just 60 cents each. (They\u2019re marked \u201cdisposable,\u201d but I often will use the same one for several weeks.) Do the math here, and you\u2019ll see that we are talking about an almost 10-fold difference in price for products that \u2014 notwithstanding the many protestations I\u2019m set to receive from hipsters who shave with hand-forged titanium blades stored in sealed alabaster canisters full of ionized gas \u2014 do the same basic thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is true for a lot of product categories where there are no real<\/em> differences between competing products except what the geniuses in the respective corporate marketing departments can conjure up out of their collective vivid imaginations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m still not caught up on all my RSS feeds, so this Jonathan Kay piece at Quillette is more than a week old, which is why we’re selling it at half-price: … Coca-Cola doesn\u2019t make you smile. The \u201cRich Corinthian Leather\u201d that Chrysler used to upholster car seats wasn\u2019t actually from Corinth. And smoking Virginia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,7,28,53,13],"tags":[311,97,956,1138,101,43],"class_list":["post-46657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-history","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-1960s","tag-advertising","tag-millennials","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry","tag-tv","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c8x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46660,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46657\/revisions\/46660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}