Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that TV advertising has been pretty much reduced to insurance companies and prescription drugs?
I was watching one of the comedies in prime time with my bestie Lynne, and as the channel went to commercial, I realised it was one reel after the next of people living their best lives because they were on Skyrizi, Humira or Ozempic. The latter is a drug for diabetes which Hollywood seems to have pounced upon, as one of its side effects is weight loss – and apparently it’s pretty effective in that regard. What I love is that it can go hand-in-hand with nausea, diarrhoea, stomach pain, vomiting and constipation. (Constipation AND diarrhoea? Oxymoron much?) I know all of these hazards because, of course, they have to announce them in the ad in the cheeriest voice possible, as though having your days centred around your toilet is time well spent. What really annoyed me, however, was how they took that perfectly lovely song ‘Magic’ by Pilot and twisted it to promote the drug. The band who owns the rights to the top 10 tune probably doesn’t share my disdain – I’m sure they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
You could usually count on knowing when certain types of ads were going to present themselves, depending on the time of day. For example, if you happened to watch ‘The Price is Right’ or soap operas such as ‘The Young and the Restless’ or ‘Days of our Lives’, odds are good you’d have some movie star in their dotage trying to talk you into a reverse mortgage, or footage of pensioners rocketing through a neighbourhood on their Rascal mobility scooter. Life insurance, the unexpected costs of a funeral, and an endless stream of smiling people opening curtains in the morning, suggesting they’d finally had a bowel movement, played across your screen. Either that, or there would be advice aplenty on what diapers to buy and the best baby food on the market. The weekday hours between 9am and 5pm basically took viewers on a journey through the alpha and omega of the human lifespan, skillfully skipping past the middle years of nightclubs, walks of shame and Coachella.
Although you’ll still witness such commercials if you work from home and spend your lunch channel-surfing, what the evening hours bring seems to have shifted. Thank God for Flo at Progressive and those amusing commercials from Geico, or it would be a wasteland. The only times you can really expect to see witty efforts put forth by companies is around major events like the Super Bowl; otherwise, where are the Clydesdale horses? Who’s tasting the rainbow? Bring back the Old Spice guy!
I am a late-night person, so I watch ‘Frasier’ on the Hallmark Channel around 1am. I had no idea that women had the potential to be so stinky until I got bombarded with these ads for Lume deodorant. Apparently, it’s an all-over-yer-body product with “outrageous 72-hour odour protection”. “Outrageous”? Knowing how sensitive Hallmark can be (rated ‘G’ productions from dawn to dusk), I’m amazed it allowed words like ‘underboob’ and ‘butt crack’ to be bandied about, even in the wee hours after watershed time.
I never see this product’s ads in prime time, so does the company just not have the bigger bucks needed to book those slots, or is it assumed that only women who stay up until 1am or later are in need of “outrageous” protection from ever-encroaching stench?
In a way, we, the viewers, are probably the ones to blame for how the types of ads have changed over time. With Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services available, along with countless ways to skip, mute or entirely eliminate the commercials that were a somewhat unwelcome necessity back in the days before the internet, we’ve possibly driven the really entertaining efforts to social media and elsewhere across the world wide web.
That’s what usually happens when you stop showing something the love – after a while, it takes the hint and moves on.
I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the commercials of yesteryear, with that lady asking “Where’s the beef?”, the Charmin guy and discovering how many licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop. I’ve also just realised how old this makes me sound. After I drown myself in Lume, I’ll take a look at that Rascal catalogue.
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