bjarvis | But Is It Art?

If an advertisement uses a celebrity and you have absolutely no idea who that person is or why should you care, is that a failure of the ad or cluelessness on your part (or both)?

How about when the ad is over and you still don't care about the product or the celebrity?

This has been rolling around in my head for a while but listening to the radio on my way to the data center today brought it all back to the surface again. One commercial is for web design & services; the personality talks as though I'm clearly supposed to know who he is and by extension how much he values his online presence and therefore align myself with the service he's endorsing.

I confess however that when I hear the ad on the radio, I miss most of the content because I'm asking myself who the hell is this and why should I care? When the ad is finished, I'm no closer to the answer, missed the content entirely and within 15 seconds I can't even remember the name of the would-be celebrity.

And that ad has been playing for months.

Recently, there's been another advertisement on the same radio station for some satellite television service. I guess I'm supposed to know who the spokeswoman is because she tells us point-blank she's a star and from the general context of the overall ad. Once again, I can't remember her name long enough to look her up: I simply have no context in which to place this person, nor a means of recording it while I'm driving.

I'm the first to admit most of western civilization and culture has simply passed me by, but I'm not entirely out of sync with the 21st century. If I can't identify these celebrities, is it really my fault, a poor choice by the ad agency or simply a budget constraint by the client that they could only afford D-list or lower celebs?

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during the football playoff in January, Subway was continually running an ad with a tall African American woman and a small white woman, speaking directly to the camera. The tall woman looked familiar, and was a pretty bad spokesperson, so I thought they must be famous. When I said "who are those people?" My brother- a huge sports nut- said they are supposed to just be average everyday people. I learned later that the woman was Laila Ali, Muhammed Ali's daughter. I'm thinking the small woman was a gymnast, but I'm not sure who it was. The ad NEVER identified these people, so the "star power" of the ads was completely lost on most of us! Why bother?

I just looked up who the other person is:

"The blond is Nastia Liukin, the Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics from 2008."

So yeah, a total waste of a star endorsement!

Welcome to being over the hill! Ads are aimed at young people, who haven't become set in their ways, and are still easily swayed by marketing. If you're over 40, you're older than most of the market.

I don't know who the latest teen idols are (although I've heard of Justin Bieber), and that's OK because I'm not a teen.

On the other hand, if you're shopping for a luxury car, of the midlife-crisis kind that young people usually can't afford, you should expect that any celebrity endorsers would be more recognizable.

I'm just hitting the age where TV stars of my childhood are dying off. Anyone who was 40 in the mid-1970's, when I was 10, would be 75 years old now. I was just reading a tabloid at a recent dance, and poor Susan Lucci is worried about her career if they cancel All My Children after 41 years -- At age 64, she could probably retire and enjoy her golden years, I think!

Well, perhaps. But in both commercials, the spokescritters sounded to be in their late 50s/early 60s. I could easily understand if some 12 year-old Disney channel star escaped my notice entirely, but it would odd for someone to have a supposedly high profile career for potentially decades and still run under my radar.

The gossip rags at the supermarket have reached a new level of ridiculousness for me because I no longer recognize most of the celebrities they're trashing.

For me, this moment came when I suddenly started seeing Kim Kardashian (sp?) on all the tabloids and magazines positioned at check-out counters.

Not only do I not know who she is (and only barely remember the name because of her omnipresent media image), but I have no idea what she's famous for.

I mean, I've never heard any of Bieber's songs (though I could easily if I chose to), but at least I know why his face is on every other magazine I see.

I confess the whole famous-for-being-famous style of celebrity evades my comprehension: Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, etc..

Celebrity meltdowns are pathetic but I at least can get my head around the nature of morbid public curiousity: Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, etc..

Pop stars in fields in which I have no interest are pretty common: Justin Bieber.

I'm still not sure how to categorize oddballs such as Snookie or her cohort. I just wish they'd go away.

you might be amused by a comment I heard after Liz Taylor died (delivered with a smug smile, I think): "MY generation had Liz Taylor. YOUR generation has Paris Hilton. It's just not fair."

But you know that's irrelevant, the name or whatever is only there to distract your conscious mind while the repetition relentlessly hammers the name of the product into your preconscious. Then you get to the supermarket and have an inexplicable craving for something you've never before wanted.

I think what you were hearing was the audio from a TV ad Comcast has been running for its re-branded Xfinity TV service, featuring Jane Lynch from Glee. There's another ad with Neil Patrick Harris too. The script makes very little sense though without the visuals. Sounds like somebody tried to get off cheap by producing a single ad for TV and radio rather than having a separate radio ad that takes advantage of radio's particular strengths.

If you want to hear radio ads done right, listen to Geico's 15-second ads, or those ads for horse racing.

But Is It Art?

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TV ads don't translate well to radio.