Beyond the fact that almost anything shown on television has a target audience, nothing can be more apparent than the obvious aims of marketing in commercial advertisements. As an employee in the field of broadcast communication, no one can understand this more so than myself... HOWEVER, simply because you are aiming your appeal towards a specific demographic does NOT give you the right to produce ignorant, mindless, and sometimes offensive campaigns simply because your audience lacks the common sense to comprehend the basic idea of, oh, say, a cheeseburger commercial...
"What is so offensive about this commercial, Patrick?" I hear you say... GOOD QUESTION! Actually, it's a bad question... There IS nothing "offensive" in the classical sense about this commercial. What I find out of place about this ad is the fact that there is an incredibly beautiful woman, who is a noted chef/food critic/reality t.v. walking down this busy, inter-city street, and parking her designer ass on some random doorstep (cause you KNOW that bitch lives uptown) just to stuff her face with a big ass, fat-loaded heart attack on a bun, licking the drippings off her moisturized, sun-kissed legs, proving that she is just like the 500pound Bubba in backwoods Tennessee, all the while a voice over plays, talking about how she used to sneak out of the house when she was growing up just to "savour that sweet, spicy sauce".
OK, MY ASS! Seriously, like that had that shit in the third-world where she was born. The fact that this woman, in all her food-loving glory, would even CONSIDER eating this burger speaks exactly to the audience it targets... the illiterate. I'll be glad when Hardee's finds another celebrity to attempt to sell their over-processed death patties so they can pull this shit off the air.
Moving on to things that are TRULY offensive...
OK. This has made national news, all because of the outcry against it. What it shows is both asinine, and offense, to men AND women. Not only are men being portrayed as bumbling, insensitive idiots, but women are portrayed as tight-lipped, oppressive harpies who can find offense in any statement made by the aforementioned brain-numbingly dim male. Honestly, all I can think is what the hell are these two assholes doing together? Maybe between her implied cynicism and his foolish dribbling, they could find a reason to off each other and destroy yet another advertising pastiche of humanities stereotypes....
I'm sure there are SEVERAL more commercials that I could list here, and go on and on for hours picking them apart and detailing every little piece of deceptive or offensive marketing, but honestly, I have better things to do... like make the world a better place through MY cynicism...
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