But Is It Art?

[bjarvis]

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?

Comments

[furmuslbulk.livejournal.com]

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?

[furmuslbulk.livejournal.com]

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!