(Be prepared, this post is a little darker than usual. Must be my mood, exam week)
I don’t even have to explain myself with this ad.
A lot of people have seen these around, and I’d say that a good guess is that only half of those people would realize this is a poster for a movie. Look at it again, and try to find exactly where it says this is a movie poster. That’s right, down at the bottom in size 12 font.
It’s just shock-and-awe-blast-some-acid-in-your-face tactic with a blatantly condescending and derogatory poster that is masking itself pretty realistically as a self help phone line. I’m sure the thought process of whichever ingenious marketer came up with this was “ZOMG! It makes you look once, blink your eyes, and then again to see if its real!!! MARKETERS DREAM, HIGH FIVE!!”
I don’t consider myself a prude when it comes to sex or anything, but things like this just boil my blood. I just don’t like it when people think they are being secretly clever with such shocking nonsense to get peoples attention (note: Lady Gaga). Do they really think they came across something that no one else thought to do before? Again, the thought process is roughly around “ZOMG we can be like so shocking and so obnoxious and like soooooo mean but funny, and do somethin that like nobody ever does in their right mind but that like totally makes it different and ppl will totally think its hilarious and they’ll take notice and omg they’ll think we’re sooooo smart for not being stupid conformist.” Anyone with an IQ in double digits knows that they can be insensitive or shocking to get a point across, but the only difference is that we have things like ethics, morals, and a sense of decency in our daily lives.
This is also the reason I hate marketing and I’m a finance kind of guy. Specifically, the part of marketing called “advertising” where the boss man simply says “sell my product, I don’t care how.” This means using whatever means necessary to promote your product, taking advantage of whatever comes their way and not thinking about any implications of anything. It has no morals, no ethical values, and its laughable to think that advertising brings any value to the product that wasn’t already there (if any). Truth is, if your movie about 14 year olds having sex, cough -SEX DRIVE – has any value at all (note: see “felony“), it should be able to sell without the marketing division deciding they need to pursue it at a certain “angle.” Simply communicating your movie should be enough, and a little creativity couldn’t hurt. But nope, there is no limit or line in marketing. Take this for example (and you see this everywhere): A guy tries to sell you a car through the cars own merits, or a guy sell you the same car by having a half-naked girl (or guy I suppose) sitting on the hood; which salesman do you buy from? What value did the second salesman add to the product?
I digress. What I’m saying is that I hope advertising like that above dies out of this world, and I’ll be sure to never watch this movie, whatever it is called. If an advertiser has to skirt the boundaries of ethics to sell a product (and I don’t mean showing skin or demeaning women, I’m desensitized to that), then chances are I won’t be buying that product. I don’t find you clever, nor do I laugh at your funny take on your product; just go away.