Monday, February 21, 2011

It's not lousy advertising. It's...


I have to believe that knowing how advertising uses language makes it possible for us to make better, more informed and honest advertising. Now I don't usually get political but I recently found something offensive that was, essentially, not good advertising.

House Republicans last week promised to drop a provision in their No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape. With this qualification, financial help would only be granted to those who had been "forcibly raped." This would add layers of gibberish and semantics, layers of testimony and bureaucracy to the court system that would frustrate
enough victims to save valuable tax dollars.

Yes, the effort was dropped and no doubt that was a good outcome. I just find it appalling that "forcible rape" was even considered.

I suppose this sort of thinking is not uncommon. We advertisers do it all the time. We say that a TV channel isn't a number on your remote, we say it's HBO; we call a used car previously owned; and we call a large coffee a Venti. We create shades of gray, split hairs, craft our connotations and our euphemisms to play off subjective tastes. When we hype our claims, we try to do it with a qualifying wink. And let's face it, most of our work doesn't really involve ethical considerations. There may be more nourishing cereals but Cap'n Crunch is not the devil incarnate.

"Forcible rape" however is gross. I remember having the same reaction to "free fire zone," a phrase first used during the Vietnam War, which makes blowing everything away in a certain area sound like free stuff is being given away after a store has burned down. "Free fire zone" and "rape" are never good. They are never even not-so bad. There are ethical considerations involved.

Webster's says "rape" is "sexual intercourse with a woman by a man without her consent and chiefly by force or deception." Oxford says it is a, "violation of a woman." So "forcible rape" is still "rape," meaning that someone is attempting to hide what is meant.

I don't want to hide what is meant. Deception is deception. Lying is lying. "Forcible rape" is fallacious advertising.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Good feels a whole lot gooder after a lot of bad.

Chicken soup. Turkey broth with pastina. Tea. Crackers. Ginger ale. Toast. Pills. Nose spray. Wooly blankets and piles of pillows, all warm and fluffy. That was my week, largely spent sick in bed. Then there was my wife who said, “Oh, poor baby.” It’s almost a shame to feel better.

This morning, as if being jarred from a dream, she said, “You’re feeling better –– go get the newspaper and, while you’re out, pick up some lettuce at the market." As I said, it’s almost a shame to feel better.

But then on TV and online, I witness the Egyptians who succeeded in liberating themselves. Peaceably. If real joy is best appreciated when it is relative to its opposite, Egyptians are experiencing something truly wonderful.

And it makes me feel good to feel better.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

This post has no pictures.

How do you get people’s mouths watering? How do you get them salivating? Flipping the stations recently, I realized that PBS's Lidia Bastianich always does it for me. There's something about her auntly appearance and her genuine Italian-ness that I trust. I can see visiting her, gorging myself at her country table and then waddling to her living room to nod off in her La-Z Boy, completely content. (I don’t know why exactly she would decorate her house with a recliner a la Frasier Crane’s dad, but she’s all about comfort so it seems fitting.) Lidia, oh Lidia... 

And this reminds me of a night on vacation in Mexico a few months ago. My wife and I were out to dinner at a new restaurant and we struck up a conversation with the maitre d’. It being new and all, we were curious. And being just before the rush of reservations, the room wasn’t too busy for him to chat with the friendly Americanos.

 We asked what he was doing to get the word out. I mean, we had just had a scrumptious, lovely meal––people should know about this place. 

 He said he was relying a lot on word of mouth. To spark some buzz, he was doing various things, like collecting email addresses and inviting hotel managers in with the hopes that they would recommend it to guests. He qualified, however, that he didn't feel comfortable with advertising. An ad agency would presumably want to photograph the food, and the chef would never allow that. The chef wanted his guests to be “surprised” by how good the food tasted and that photography would set up “false expectations.” The chef was firm about this.

 And that reminds me of something I recently read in “I Wonder,” a truly wonderful book by Marian Bantjes. Apparently, in Islam, Muslims have an aversion to the depiction of heavenly or earthly creatures, so as not to challenge God. There’s a desire not to stunt the imagination with the depiction of things; but rather to create amazingly intricate and beautiful ornamentation. The thinking is that the greatest sense of awe and respect comes from the release of the imagination, unrestricted by literal thinking.

 There’s something to that. Done right, it demands the highest level of creativity, which will seem to most people a lot riskier than a nice product shot.

 And the restaurant? As this was an inspiring meal, I am compelled to say that if you ever vacation in Cabo San Lucas, give Casianos in San Jose Del Cabo a try. Call for a reservation at +52 624 142 59 28. I’m hoping it will be very busy.