Only in Blogs

I always used to hate it, years ago, when movie ads would end by saying, "only in theatres!" I was like, Geez, what else would it be? Movies open in theatres, then come out on video months later; that’s the way of the world. How hard is that to understand? But of course, you know they have to say that because there's that one person who would try going to Blockbuster expecting to rent the big movie that just came out that weekend.

I know that sounds weird, but we've all met that one person who just doesn't understand how the world works, even if they've lived in it all their lives. You know, the one who tries to order a Big Mac at Burger King, and is genuinely surprised and angry that they can’t get one.

It would be convenient if there was a name for such a person, like the way we decided that “Karen” would mean self-important complainers. That made it easy for all of us to have a simple name to refer to the concept, even if it did poison the name and lead to prejudice against thousands of innocent people. Maybe for this concept, we should choose a name that's already fallen out of favour. How about Millicent? It’s a rare name, so whatever anger they have over this will be offset by the fact that we're mentioning them.

Anyway, that's why the "only in theatres" line bothered me: the ignorance that it was coddling. I mean, I try to be patient of ignorance, but in this case it's a kind of wilful ignorance. To misunderstand the world so badly, you must be ignoring everything around you. And advertisers were just encouraging it. It would be like airlines placating Flat-Earthers by guaranteeing that none of their flights would go near the edges of the earth.

Though really, I suppose the “only in theatres” line wasn’t to protect the ignorant consumers from wasting their time at Blockbuster, so much as to protect the movie studio from irrational complaints from Millicents disappointed they couldn’t rent the movie hours after its release. And in the process, they’re also protecting that poor kid working for Blockbuster who would have to explain the logistics of the movie industry to angry customers. Customers who probably also thought they could use their Subway Club card to rent at Blockbuster.

But what really bugs me is that today the ads have to specify, "only in theatres," because they might actually be making a major release on streaming services. Sure, it’s convenient that there are so many ways to distribute movies today, but I feel like the simpletons won.

But another way of looking at this is that however complex the world of the 90’s used to seem to these people, that’s how complex the world has actually become. The world was inevitably bewildering to a person who thought they could buy something at Kmart and then return it for their money back at Sears. But now, that’s how complex the world is even to normal people. Today, we are all Millicent.

Why She Had To Go, I Don’t Know

Today I saw odd news of a lawsuit over the movie Yesterday. The problem is that there was a trailer for the film that included a scene with Ana de Armas, but she wasn’t in the movie at all, and now a couple of viewers are suing.

First, take this with a grain of salt: although some outlets are reporting it as the studio “losing” the lawsuit, what actually happened is that the studio tried to get the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that movie trailers are themselves an art form and thus protected by freedom of speech. But the judge ruled that the trailers are just commercials, and thus subject to false-advertising laws, so the trial can begin. But that trial itself has not been decided.

This is one of those case where I don’t know who to cheer for. On the one hand, this is a classic case of America’s litigation culture. Two people rented a movie for $3.99 and are now suing for $5 million. That’s both excessive and super creepy that they think watching Ana de Armas in a supporting role is worth $5 million. But on the other hand, I am — along with many others — really sick of misleading trailers. To be fair, this wasn’t a case of a pre-planned bait-and-switch; de Armas was supposed to be in the movie, but test audiences really hated the subplot she was a part of, so the final cut axed it entirely. But the movie studios have really strained people’s trust for years, and it would be nice if something curtailed that.

It’s just unfortunate how these things so often become all-or-nothing. Yes, it would be nice if studios paid the price for false advertising, but not one studio paying the price for an incident which wasn’t the most egregious example. And it would be nice for movie watchers to get justice, but not a reward for an excessive lawsuit that looks like a disturbing celebrity fixation. The ideal would be some sort of treaty between moviegoers and studios: you start making more honest trailers, and we won’t unleash the Stan army and their lawyers on you.

Boards Of Canada

There’s been a big change in hockey broadcasting this season: virtual board ads. That is, TV broadcasters can now superimpose fake ads over the real-life ads on the boards. This gives them a chance to do many previously impossible things, like animated ads, or changing ads during play.

Fans are pretty angry. I know, it’s something new in hockey, of course they don’t like it. But in this case, they’re crying wolf with justification. It is pretty annoying. Yes, the advertisers are on their best behaviour, keeping movement to a minimum, but we’ll see how long that lasts. We’ve seen some of the distracting sideline advertising in soccer, and that can’t be far away.

Though I have a couple more complaints: first, this suffers from the same problem as the virtual ads behind home plate in baseball; no concern for insulting our intelligence with geographically-unlikely ads. Like yes, I’m sure Tim Hortons really did pay for a stadium ad at this game in San Diego.

Also, the tech is apparently expensive enough that they can only apply it to the one camera. Switch to a close up, and we have to suffer the old analog boards. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it disorienting when I see a player pasted against the Hyundai sign, but then from the other angle, he gets a face full of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Having said all this, I have to admire how well it works: 

• They stay in place very accurately, unlike the on-field ads in the CFL, which — hate to say it — look pretty amateurish, sliding and spinning  around the field.
• They rarely bleed over top of player uniforms, even white ones, unlike the on-court ads I’ve seen in basketball.
• Unlike virtual ads in baseball, they don’t suffer from looking crystal-clear, on a field that we’re viewing through 400 feet of rain. Although they sometimes look unnaturally bright, almost like they’re lit up. 

It’s also strange how technology doesn’t work out the way we expect. Soccer and the CFL have had electronic ad boards on the sidelines for years, and I assumed it was only a matter of time until someone made a version of those screens that was durable and flexible enough to be used as hockey boards. But no, virtual technology swoops in for the win. Somewhere out there is an engineer with a half-finished flexible LED panel and a broken heart.

Sun Life On My Shoulders

I’m stuck here watching the traditional NBA Christmas games, since it’s that or watch year-end retrospectives or sitcom marathons, or get into the twenty-first century and pay for a streaming service. I should have invited someone to watch them. I know the Raptors aren’t doing anything today, I could have asked them. Of course, that’s Canadian basketball’s yearly complaint, that it doesn’t matter how many winning seasons the Raps have, they’ll never get invited to play on one of the Christmas Day marquee games. At the same time, it doesn’t matter how bad the Knicks get, they’ll just keep getting invited back.

But I should acknowledge that this complaint is not just unique to Toronto this year. Not only are the Raps not playing despite leading the league, the Western Conference leading Denver Nuggets are also at home to unwrap presents and watch 28th-out-of-30 New York stagger around the court. I’m sure some folks are putting together anti-Canadian conspiracy theories based on the fact that one of their key players is Canada’s own Jamal Murray.

It’s more likely that the Denver market just isn’t important enough to the American broadcasters. You see the same thing in Baseball, where the Sunday night national telecast has become a tiresome rotation of the same few teams over and over. No, I’m not expecting them to show the Blue Jays — at least over the last couple of years — but teams like Milwaukee and, again, Colorado get ignored even when they have good teams. Having said that, smaller markets Portland and Utah are coming up in the Christmas night game, so you could also chalk this up to the broadcasters and league doing a bad job of predicting which teams will be good this year. If next Christmas features the Nuggets playing the Knicks while the defending-champion Raptors sit, then we can go back to Canadian indignation.

But one thing you can appreciate when watching multiple NBA games is the oddness of the league’s uniform sponsors. Starting at the beginning of last season, teams have had a corporate logo on their uniforms. It’s nice and tasteful, rather than the giant ads used in soccer or the WNBA. So I’m filing it with the NHL’s shootouts under sports ideas I hated but surprisingly don’t get angry about.

It helps that there haven’t been any embarrassing ad associations. That’s in sharp contrast to venue names, where most of the names are okay, but you feel stupid talking about Sleep Train Arena or Smoothie King Center. Actually, it’s been nice that many teams have sponsorship from local companies, such as Harley Davidson for Milwaukee or Goodyear for Cleveland.

But what’s odd is that even though the less-lucrative teams like Sacramento have not had to take sponsorship from Depends or Preparation H, the more popular teams haven’t taken sponsorship from the Blue Chips. Like, you’d think the Warriors would have a bidding war that only the richest companies could hope to win. Say, a local company like Google or Apple. But no, their sponsor is Rakuten, which is a Japanese e-commerce company and not, as I had assumed, a sound effect from Street Fighter. Apparently it’s a big company, I’m just surprised that a bigger American company didn’t want it. Or, to put it another way, Rakuten is apparently called “the Amazon of Japan,” yet they wanted to sponsor an American sports team even more than the Amazon of America did.

And the Lakers should be a big score too, given their history and their Lebron James. But again, they’re sponsored by Wish. Sure, that’s a big company, but you’d expect the Lakers to be sponsored by Exxon or something, if only to match the Celtics and their GE ads. Okay, I guess the current Lakers are promising, but haven’t truly arrived yet, which is sort of like ordering from Wish.

My point is that the ads aren’t really the prestige item you might expect; many companies are seeing it as a path to legitimacy. I guess it’s sort of like a Super Bowl ad. Sure, Coke or GM might make one, but a lot of the time it’s just some dot-com betting half their funding on making a big impression with the public.

Car And Browser

It's long been a feature of our Internet age that advertisers try to figure out what we are interested in and then advertise more of it to us. And it's a feature of our Internet age that it often fails, sometimes hilariously.

It seems like a simple enough programing concept: if customer X has shown an interest in product Y, show X some more Y's. Show all the Y's. Try Y₁, Y₂, Y₃. Maybe Z, that's close. Give Ω a shot, that's the same idea, really.

But there are times where this doesn't work. I remember one person complaining that after buying a toilet at Home Depot, it started suggesting other bargains on toilets. Their program apparently didn't consider that for some products, once you've bought one, it actually becomes less likely that you'll buy another.

And I realized this right from the first time I tried ordering things on line. Some of the first things I ever bought were gifts. That lead to months of misguided suggestions for products I, personally, had no interest in.

Now I'm having the same thing happen to me with car ads. I've looked through on-line used-car ads many times, but, well, I often use the car ads to dream, rather than find practical transportation. But the Autotrader ad program can't understand that if I'm looking at a Maseratti in Winnipeg, that doesn't mean that I am likely to buy a Maseratti, or that I'm in Winnipeg. I don't know, but I had kind of assumed that if you actually were in the market for expensive cars, you wouldn't be looking for them in Autotrader. But maybe they do things differently in Winnipeg.  Anyway, the point is that I look at car ads the same way I look at Wikipedia; I start with a nice, pragmatic search, then  I follow a few links out of interest, and next thing I know, I’m looking at a vintage Land Rover in Trois-Rivières.

The problem is, the misunderstanding doesn't end there. When I'm on Facebook, I'll often see ads placed by Autotrader. It will be something like, "Great deals on coupes in Winnipeg," followed by some of the cars on offer, hoping I'll go to the page. I'll snicker at it at first, but then I'll see that one is a third-generation RX-7 for $20 grand, I'll think, that's a great deal, and click on the link. And then I'll be off in automotive fantasy land again, looking at cars I couldn't afford.

And so the cycle repeats itself. The next day I'll see an ad for convertables in Kamloops, and I'll remember, okay, sure I guess I did look at one such car, and they extrapolated from... ooh, a low-milage Boxster in Kelowna.

Anyway, Autotrader's idea of what I'm looking for has long ago departed from any vehicle I'm ever likely to buy. And that's how I was today shown an ad for trucks in Edmonton, by Autotrader's french service, AutoHebdo.net.

Is Pepsi Okay?

I'm amazed by these new diet coke ads. Coke seems to be rebranding it, with energy-drink-style cans, and young-person-based-ads. I know I'm not the target market, but they look awful. You know, the ones where they're walking down the street talking to you.

(And here's the other. I have to admit: it's cute that if you're watching closely, you'll see them pass each other. I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to notice that.)

I may not be the target market, but I do remember some of the embarrassing ads that tried to appeal to me when I was part of the hot demographic. Both then and now, it was clear that they were putting these ads together based on what the ad execs had seen on TV or overheard in malls, not by actually talking to young people. "Maybe you're into friends who leave voice mail"?!? What does that even mean? Can you be into friends who don't use voice mail anymore? It's like they wrote the script using Mad Libs Millennial Edition.

I guess there is a certain challenge in understanding new generations. In my case, they were trying to figure out what Generation X cared about, before finally realizing it was nothing. Now they're trying to focus our what Millennials have in common, and are realizing that is also nothing. Well, one thing most of them do share is a disappointment in an economy that isn't giving them opportunities for rewarding or prestigious careers. You know, like jobs in advertising, where they could have prevented this embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Pepsi had an ad that walks us down memory lane. That's a big departure for them. As I observed previously, one of the few constants throughout my life had been Pepsi constantly trying to align themselves with whatever young people idolize. But one of the necessities of that strategy is that your ads have to live in the now: if you're appealing to today's kids, you can't mention that you were also trying to appeal to their parents. In this case, they not only admit that, they go on to tell you that they helped your grandad score at the drive in.

The fact is, we've entered a new pop-cultural epoch, where time no longer exists. Between reboots, rehashes and remixes, we're experiencing everything at once, so nothing can be hot, cold, retro, or camp anymore. It's like at the fall of communism, some people claimed it was the End of History. I didn't believe that then, and it turned out to be totally wrong, but somehow Pepsi rejecting trendiness feels even more monumental. It's like the concept was dying on us, and society needed Pepsi to give us permission to let it go, and herald this new era.

Don't Follow Me...

The license plates here in Ontario display the slogan, "Yours to Discover." 

Older folks will remember that they used to say, "Keep it Beautiful" to encourage respect for the environment.  But in the early 80's, they adopted the province's tourism slogan, "Yours to Discover." Ontario has had other catchphrases, but I guess none have had the same kind of emphasis, since they haven't made it onto the plates yet.

I'm not sure how far an ad campaign would have to go before they start putting a new slogan on the plates.  I'm kind of worried about this, because the latest tourism campaign have been focused on a kind of cryptic phrase.

As an ad phrase, it gets attention and is distinctive, even if it doesn't have a strong message.  But whether it works as an ad campaign or not, I have to point out to our government that it would be particularly bad on our license plates.

Hal, Tell Them About Doritos

Burger King got into the news recently because of a clever but dickish ad. The ad has someone saying, "OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?" As you may know, "OK Google" is the phrase used to get the attention of Google-based products, like Android phones (For you Apple types, it's the equivalent of addressing a question to Siri.)

Of course, that means that any Google products in hearing range will be activated, and go to a page on the Whopper. Google responded by changing the programming to recognize that particular sound clip and not respond to it. And, just to underline that Burger King is subversive/tone-deaf, they re-recorded the clip to get around Google's response.

In case you're wondering, yes, it is possible to change the phrase to something else on your Google products, so this won't happen. I'm reminded that in the sci-fi book, Old Man's War, there are personal assistants built into people's heads, and most people find it so intrusive that they choose profane names to address it with. That would solve your problem: just use one of the words you can't say in TV.

It seems to me that there's a learning-curve for everyone when it comes to new technology and media, where we all learn about what is going to be considered acceptable. In the early World Wide Web, there was a company - I think it was Pepsi - who programmed their web page to record the e-mail address of everyone who came to the site. Today, it's hard to believe that a company wouldn't know that would blow up in their face, or that we were so naive about privacy that a Web browser would give out your info to whoever asked. When people found out, there were complaints, they stopped the e-mail trawl.

But the other similarity in these two incidents is that it came from exactly who you would expect it from. For all their imperfections, it's hard to imagine McDonald's pushing the limits of acceptable use of technology like this. But Burger King and Pepsi are both playing the role of the brash upstart in their business duels. Of course they'd be the one to push the limits too far. Coke isn't going to offend everyone by trying to appeal to woke youngsters, but Pepsi would. In the book, Infinite Jest, where years are named after their sponsors, it's mentioned that the first such year was the Year of the Whopper. And that made total sense; of course they were the first ones to buy a year. They always will be.

Who Sells Out

I'm not really comfortable when the music business mixes with advertising. I lived through the alternative music era of the early nineties, when any musician not busking for the money to eat was considered a sell-out. Of course, the pendulum swung back the other way, and by the end of the decade, people were congratulating Moby for licensing all 18 tracks from his album Play. The pendulum hasn't swung back to anti-commercialism again, so we're still in an era when there's little consequence for musicians selling their soul to the ad biz. But even if fans and journalists don't punish artists, there are still some things to consider.

Level 1

Selling your song

This is when you let someone use your song in an ad. This seems like a harmless thing to do, and in the modern world, it's probably the best way to get your song heard. The problem is that the ad will now be by far the number one way people hear your song. So it's no longer your song, it's the song from the Nissan commercial.

This used to be considered selling out, but it's now acceptable to anyone not hanging on to their 90's flannel. The argument in favour of selling your song for commercial use is that you have the song, what harm does it do if you let someone else use it? My response is to ask, how sure are you that selling this song won't influence how you write your next song? Which brings us to...

Level 1b

Selling your next song

X Ambassadors really cashed in when they had the luck to write a song called "Renegades" just as Jeep was introducing a new SUV called the Renegade. I wonder how many struggling bands have started reading the car mags to find out what models are coming soon.

This is also the level Fitz and the Tantrums are going to for their song, "HandClap," which is quickly infecting stadium playlists everywhere. I mean, it's great that it's displacing DJ Casper's "Cha Cha Slide" who's "Everybody Clap Your Hands" soundbite has been a crutch for hack stadium DJ's for years.

Level 2

Letting them change the lyrics

At this point you're really tarnishing your song's memory, since you're making the song literally about the product. This means that people will forever hear the commercial version in their heads when they think of your song. This still happens to me for "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" (Minute Maid) and "I Can't Help Myself" (Duncan Hines) even decades after those ads were on the air. My point is, you only resort to this when you are truly done with the song, and never expect that you or anyone else will use it for its original intention ever again.

Level 3

Changing the lyrics to something completely different

A few years ago I heard them play "Your Love" at a baseball game. It's one of those songs you know you've heard, but you can't place it, so I had to look it up on to identify it. It's by The Outfield, which I discovered is a British band, even though they're named after a baseball term. That's weirdness I can appreciate.

But in the Glee aftermath you're allowed to like eighties music as long as you pretend you're only liking it ironically, so the song has a huge value to advertisers. That's how "Your Love" becomes a baseball anthem, and how advertisers get interested in putting it into a commercial, thus looking hip and appealing to old people at the same time. But by allowing an ad to re-write the song to tell the story of a loser with a wrinkled shirt to sell Bounce sheets, the song becomes a punchline.

At this point, you're not merely damaging the song, you're turning it into a joke. I can talk about "Sunshine of My Life," and you may remember it as a great song, as long as you don't try to hum along with Stevie Wonder and find yourself singing about orange juice. But once your song is a punchline, people can't even remember the existence of the song and take it seriously. To put it another way, changing the lyrics is like killing the song, this is like killing the song and then erasing all evidence it ever existed.

Someone Needs Changing

I wonder if Hollywood has run out of ideas yet...

Getting close, but no.

I'm sure the marketing for this one will be pretty annoying, and there's still six weeks to go.  So at least consider this possibility: Sometime in the last few months, some studio exec had to stop and consider whether it was worth re-rendering the entire movie with a Trump-style toupée on the baby.

The Overly Expendables

For a while now, people have speculated that digital special effects have hurt movies. Sure, they've allowed for much better effects, but the problem is that it's now so easy to throw together a visually-impressive sci-fi/fantasy/superhero movie. It used to be that such movies were so difficult that the studios would put everything into them. Now, they're so common that Marvel was already advertising their next blockbuster before the current one even opens.

But I think it might actually be worse for TV ads. It used to be that special effects were out of the question for them, except the odd Superbowl spot. But now they can have effects well beyond movies of thirty years ago. And that's made them kind of lazy. Any old idea can be done pretty quickly and cheaply, so little thought or oversight is applied.

Of course, I'm thinking of that LG ad which takes place on a city street where everyone is played by Jason Statham. What the hell is that all about? I mean, normally I can understand the point any ad is making, however convoluted. For instance, several phone and insurance companies have started showing people doing fun or heartwarming things that have nothing to do with phones or insurance, and you just have to make the connection that their lives are so much more complete because of the money they saved on phones and insurance.

But long-haired Jason Statham dancing in the street while filmed by elderly Jason Statham in a cafe? Because someone, presumably Jason Statham, bought an LG phone? I've got no explanation, other than the idea that putting this commercial together is now so cheap that the whole project passed through the ad agency so quickly that no one stopped and said, huh? Normally I wouldn't criticize Statham, since I appreciate his bringing unprecedented masculinity to both baldness and the name "Jason." But this commercial is just weird.

I think it's just because ad agencies can brainstorm any old idea, then put it into practice so easily. Somebody watches The Transporter and Being John Malkovich in one night, follows that up with a three-martini lunch, and suddenly ad sounds like a good idea.

This wouldn't have happened in the eighties, simply because you wouldn't have been able to fund it unless it was a really brilliant idea.

"We'll have an army of Rambos, all played by Sylvester Stallone, and they'll be on a mission to find the beef that's missing from hamburgers. It'll cost $50 million."

"We'll give you enough for one old lady."

I Don't Always Study Chromosomes, But When I Do, I Prefer Dos Equis

This week we found out that Dos Equis beer is going to be changing the "Most Interesting Man In The World" character from their ads. They're still using the same concept, but they'll have a new actor in the role. The current Most Interesting Man will get some appropriate send off, supposedly a one-way trip to Mars.

So now they're going to have to come up with a new Most Interesting Man. But in our enlightened era, some people have suggested they have a Most Interesting Woman In The World. I'll leave it to you to decide/argue whether that's a good idea or not, but either way, it brings up the interesting question of what the Most Interesting Woman would be like. After all, we don't expect women to have their own identity, never mind a complex, multifaceted identity. So there really aren't many adventuresome, hyper-talented role models for women. The Most Interesting Man seems to be inspired by Ernest Hemingway, but who would you use as the basis for the female version? Here are some ideas:

• Jane Goodall
• Dorothy Parker
• Kim Gordon
• Anaïs Nin
• Nellie Bly
• Ani DiFranco
• Hedy Lemarr
• Carrie Fisher
• Laurie Anderson
• Björk
• Hillary Clinton
• Amelia Earhart
• Yoko Ono
• Oprah Winfrey

It's Everyone's Thing

You have to wonder what advertisers are thinking when they choose music for their commercials. Obviously they're trying to associate a catchy, usually energetic and positive, song with their product. Ford has decided to build their entire campaign around Rachel Platten's "Fight Song."  It's the kind of transparently defiant pop song that I honestly was surprised was not by Kelly Clarkson. Is that really the tone to sell cars? They're trying to convince me to buy a compact crossover, then close-out the pitch with a song of someone trying to overcome a personal crisis.

But what really surprises me is that advertisers don't consider the problems with reusing a song. They're trying to associate their product with the song, so you'd think they'd shy away from songs already associated with a different product. Yes, "Good Morning" seems like the ideal music for an orange juice ad, but don't they know we've been trained to associate that song with Viagra?

But the worst is "It's Your Thing." Already made annoying by Ramada, now both Phillips and SlimFast are using it. Strangely, the latter seem to be building their whole campaign around the song, using the title for their website and hashtag. With all the music in the world, why would anyone reuse psychologically-polluted songs like these? I can only assume it's because the folks who own the rights to these songs are much quicker to sell permission than most. Indeed, "It's Your Thing" was by The Isley Brothers, who also recorded "Shout," another song abused by commercials.  So, Messrs Isley, please have some self-respect and raise your rates

Hoverboards Falling Back To Earth

What's up with hoverboards? Not the ones from Back to the Future, I mean these new devices that look like the spawn of a Segway and a skateboard. A lot of people have decided that it's the thing we're going to Cabbage-Patch into a Christmas obsession this year.

For a start, that's a bad name, since it doesn't hover. I know, I shouldn't expect the name of a commercial product to be accurate. But there is a problem with promising that much more than you can deliver. Lots of car companies exaggerate their products' performance, but no one just suddenly decided to call their engines "warp drive."  And yet, despite the pathetic attempt to oversell a product by piggybacking on a pop-culture favourite celebrating an anniversary this year, the public seems to be eating it up.

But somehow, I don't think this is a big breakthrough in wheeled conveyances. Yes, it looks clever and useful. But often new inventions turn out to be just stepping-stones to more profound achievements. For instance, people in the 70's probably thought roller skates were here to stay, but now it seems they'll just be remembered as an evolutionary step towards inline skates. Similarly, this "hoverboard" just looks like an invention that someone in the future will turn into something else.

(I just looked it up, and apparently the first roller skate was inline-style, so never mind.)

I don't just mean actual hoverboards - even with today's technology, I'm sure we could do better. I mean take a look at Orbitwheels. Doesn't that look cooler? And I know they have robots that balance on a single ball. And since Sergways/pseudo-hoverboards use the same sort of technology, why not a platform with a ball in the middle, so you can move in any direction?
I'm going to get to work on that right now, out at least after I check Amazon for Black Friday deals on hoverboards.

I Definitely Mean This

I'm really getting tried of the phrase, "_____ like you mean it."  It's no surprise for KFC to tell me to "Eat like you mean it." But when the CBC is telling me to "Holiday like you mean it," you know it's gone too far. Yes, it's an unfortunate aspect of pop culture that reckless aggressive entities get to use the memes when they're still cool, but the awkward ones that have trouble expressing themselves end up using them later, oblivious they've gone stale, and end up sounding like a dad trying to be cool.

But why is like-you-mean-it so annoying? Well, it's always frustrating when advertisers want us to believe that their product is the best way to express ourselves, like it's somehow a purer expression of our true spirit than everything else in this numbingly artificial world. One made numbingly artificial by all the mass produced products we're constantly being sold.

But in this case, we have an added dose of macho competitiveness. We're not just accusing you of living half-heartedly, we're making it sound like you're a wimp for not putting some effort into your life. Have some self-respect you wuss, and watch Frosty the Snowman.

So I am giving "_____ like you mean it" the "______ is the new black" award for phrases that have outstayed their welcome. Thus, I can now say, "Like you mean it is the new black." This causing the saying to disappear into the linguistic vortex in an implosion of cliche.

My Reputation Precedes Me

There's a lot of talk about how much advertisers know about us. Of course, there's not a lot of respect for privacy, and companies want to assemble as much data about us as possible so they can give us the most targeted ads. My response is that I wish my ads were targeted to me. No, I don't want to download Candy Crush! What have I ever done that would make you think I want to play that? Being human sure, but the point is, it's not really a good use of the data about me.

But on the other hand, there's plenty of data out there that we hand out voluntarily. When I tried using Microsoft's new Edge web browser, I was shocked to find that it presented me with a list of recent scores of my favorite sports teams. How did it know? My phone knows my favorite teams, since I put them into the "Google Now" feature to get updates on them. But that's a Google product, and they don't talk to Microsoft.

 
So here I was, worried that my laptop had hacked my phone, all in an effort to please me. But then I remembered that had inputted my favorite teams into Windows 8.1 to get scores in one of those squares in that weird tile interface. Of course, like most people, I tried to avoid using that interface, so I forgot all about what I'd told it about myself. But apparently, in some Microsoft computer somewhere, there's a notation that I'm looking for Raptors scores. And that my affinity for Minesweeper somehow translates into a desire for Candy Crush. (Completely ridiculous - Minesweeper is true strategic, intellectual timewasting.)

But this brings up a question: how much other information have I left out there. I can't count how many sites I've signed up to, or created a log in for, but no longer use. I remember using a movie recommendation site in the nineties. So somewhere out there a computer knows all about the movies I liked as a twenty-something. But we've probably all left a digital impression of ourselves behind us. I don't know if anyone tries using that data, perhaps trying to link the info in abandoned accounts with the information they have about us today. Who knows how accurate that process is. They could be confusing me with an old GeoCities account for a James Roe. And he really loves Candy Crush.

Cup Of Mudslinging

Here's an ad sent to me by my local Conservative candidate. 

I'm not even sure where to begin.  The first thing I noticed is the "Career Politician" label they've put on Mr. Mulcair.  So now the Tories are criticizing one of their competitors over his lack of experience, and criticizing the other for having too much experience.  And of course, Mulcair and Harper have spent about the same amount of time in elected office.

But more than anything, I keep trying to imagine the planning that went into such an ad.  For instance, you know that actual adults with a great deal of education actually had a conversation about whether the coffee stain would be over-the-top.  They asked, how can we make Mulcair look as unprofessional as possible? 

We could write it in crayon, but that would come off as mean.  Let's go with the coffee stain.

Oh, but could that hurt us, make him sound like a man of the people, someone for the Tim Hortons crowd?  

Good point, we'll have to make it look like it came from a coffee cup, not a Tim's takeout cup.

I'm not one of those naive people who believes that negative ads don't work. But I'm wondering why this is the one type of advertising where subtlety goes out the window.  Even that semi-racist Hyundai ad wasn't this vicious with its depiction of its competitors (for instance, they weren't shown wearing stained clothing.)  And that ad was about as vicious as normal advertising gets.  It could be that they have less time to get their message across.  But then, the ads the Conservatives run between elections hit just as hard. So maybe someday we'll have parties using long-term brand-building strategies.  I think it would be much easier to take elections if they were just like reliving the 1980's cola war.

Here In My Car, I Feel Safest Of All

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post excoriating GM for TV ads using stereotypes to sell trucks and ridicule small car drivers. Around the same time I wrote that, BMW was starting up their own campaign.

These ads show video of a BMW being driven at high speed around a track. Meanwhile, the incongruous audio is of someone praising a businessman. In one ad, it's part of a speech presenting an award, while another has a boss announcing a promotion. In both cases, they're pretty anonymous: there are few details about the unheard subject's achievements. The message is just one of success in business. I'd summarize the ads as BMW saying, "You know how everyone thinks our customers are self-centred materialist pricks? Well, we're totally okay with that."

This is pretty surprising. I know, we can't expect all products to appeal to us, but these aren't cases of brands that merely miss me; they're completely the opposite of what I want. So I want to know: if Chevy and BMW can be so completely different from me, who is similarly perfect for me?

As a child/teen following the world of cars, I got the idea that Saab was the brand for me. It had a nice mix of quirk, engineering, design, sportiness and efficiency. But alas, long before I could afford one, Saab had gone to that great parking lot in the sky.

So who else would I go with?

• Subaru? They briefly built a car for Saab in their final days, and seem to have inherited the quirky car crown from them. And the WRX STI has always appealed to me as the nerdy car vengeance machine.
• Mazda? I mentioned my appreciation of them - despite their ads - in the past.
• Volvo? Saab's stuffier Scandinavian brother is another possibility. Again, they have the anti-cool coolness I appreciate.
• Tesla?  Well sure, just give me a few decades to save up.

(And If you're thinking it was sexist that I characterized Volvo as male, I refer you to their logo.)

My point is that although car makers have their own personalities, there are still a lot of people who aren't covered.  If you're masculine, aggressive, materialist, - or, for that matter, dull - then you have lots of choices. But geeky hipster guys in touch with their feminine side are out of luck.

Syntaxality!

I've seen an ad for the new Mortal Kombat game in which it says the game is "available digitally and in stores." We sometimes talk about digital downloads of movies, so it took second to remember that we're talking about a video game here. And that's when it hit me: available digitally and in stores. Does that mean that if I buy it in stores, I get an analog version?

Apparently they have decided that because the word "digitally" is applied to downloads, so the word will now be used to mean "downloaded with no physical copy." This, even though all copies of the game are, like all software today, digital.

It's sort of like how we in Canada refer to the electricity supply as "hydro" because we started with the term “hydroelectric” and generalized the wrong part of the word. Or it’s like “film” in reference to a feature-length movie. The word “film” originally meant the celluloid the movie was recorded on, but it is now used to refer to movies that go from studio to audience without using any film or tape.

In contrast, sound recorded on grooved vinyl was called a “record” because it was a recording. Yet somehow, we came to think of “record” as meaning the physical thing itself, so no one would call a collection of audio computer files as a “record,” even though it’s still a recording. I don’t know how society decides on these things. Why is this thing I’m writing called a “blog” and not a “glorified diary shoved in the public’s face”?

Checking The Canary In The Data Mine

We're getting used to the idea that advertisers have a huge amount of information about us, and they can use it to target us with ads tailored to our needs and wants.  You may have seen the story about how Target sent pregnancy-related ads to a teen girl, shocking her father who didn't know she was pregnant.  (Yep, that's how smart Target is in the U.S.)

It often works.  This ad isn't quite what I'm looking for, but it's close:

I'm not in the market for a lightsaber, but if anyone is going to buy one for personal defense or recreational purposes, it would likely be me.

Then I saw this ad:

That's awful specific.  I wonder what Big Data incantations gave them the idea I'm working on a first-generation Mustang.

But then there's this one:

That's right: Nielsen.  The people who study audiences.  Somehow, they served me up an ad in Chinese.