Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Nobody Asked Me But, Late July Edition.


Nobody Asked Me But, is sporadic miscellany and my meagre tribute to the long-gone New York sportswriter, Jimmy Cannon. Mr. Cannon would write one of these columns when he could find nothing otherwise to write about. I suppose I'm doing the same.

Nobody Asked me But...

...It seems that every day someone in advertising announces they are on yet another jury.

...It's just possible there are more ad juries than there are ads.

...Someone should watch TV for a month, then calculate the number of ads they'd seen and the number of ads they'd seen that were entered in Cannes. 

...I'd bet the overlap would be less than three-percent.

...less than three-tenths of one-percent.

...I used to worry about the power of AI until I realized humanity can't even make a dental floss dispenser that doesn't break before you finish with the floss.



...I think hiring Margot Robbie to play Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, is very very bad casting. Must have something to do with the writers' strike.

...If someone posts a commercial over :60, I won't watch it unless they give me a money-back guarantee.

...RFK, Jr.'s father was no saint either. He rose to prominence defending red-baiter Joseph McCarthy. He was chief counsel to arch-racist and segregationist Senator John McClellan and he had Martin Luther King, Jr.'s phones tapped--subjecting him to blackmail by J. Edgar Hoover. 

...Twitter feels like a hotel in the Catskills just before the whole area was left for dead. For that matter, so does Elon Musk.

...Speaking of Elon Musk, Mole Sunk is an almost perfect anagram for him.

...If there were still Good Humor men today, they'd be micro-dosing people rather than selling ice cream bars. I'm sure we're worse off.

...Any brand that says "we're the official _____ of ______," officially has no ideas.

...If you fill up your hotel-room minibar, will they give you $9 for a can of Diet Coke and $7.50 for peanut M&Ms?

...This Volvo ad is one of the worst ads I've ever seen. I don't have a lot of "yous," just me and I don't know what a "mild hybrid" is, though I do have a mild case of acid indigestion.

...I'm recommending Jonathan Eig's "King" to everyone.

...Wouldn't it be nice if people read a little Black history before the next Black History Month. It would surely do more than merely changing your logo.

...I don't understand ads that open with a client's logo and usually a musical sting. Is that supposed to draw me in? There are very few brands where I sit up in my seat and say, "Shhhh, a new Hyundai commercial."

...Most ads I see today seem not to be created, produced, scored, mixed or acted by professionals. Everything contributes to an over-arching sense of cheapness and that customers aren't worth caring about.

...I have a feeling that the same Private Equity companies that own the major award shows, like Cannes, are also major owners of ad agency holding companies.

...I can't prove it yet, but as they used to say down at the Fulton Fish Market, "something stinks here and it ain't the fish."




 

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