Sounds like may they find another aßhole like them to work with them.

Kind of reminiscent of Veer's Extra Black t-shirt, isn't it? And I always found type to be so calming....

Can you post the French version too.

This is part of a current trend of advertising that sees viciousness as humorous and a good sales tool. There were a bunch of Superbowl ads like this yesterday. I find them repulsive.

Given Winnipeg's weather, you need to have a mean streak to survive, but this is silly.

(signed: a proud ex-Winnipegger)

The Superbowl ads were like the Punch n Judy show done by a cult of sadistic Goth axe murderers.

But I love my Veer Black T!

ChrisL

It is a balmy 10 degrees F here in DC--which prompted a "Severe Weather Advisory" locally. I know you folks in Manatoba and other points north which have an actual bonafide Winter would just call this an averege day at the beach. The local weather folks were clear to inform us that there was an actual wind chill which made it feel MUCH colder than 10 degrees F. God knows, there is no such thing as wind chill in Greenbay, Chicago, or Fargo. The only wind that blows in Canada must come from the within the Washington Beltway.

ChrisL

(Let me guess, Chris: our neighbourhood Giant is out of milk already! Bob must be pretty excited. We're expecting a high of 50F today, which means firiing up the BBQ for our first February meal. The downside will come tonight, when the weather front slides through and we're supposed to get snow and temps around 0F for the rest of the week.)

In Canada, we get all that sort of hot air from Ottawa and (fill in name of provincial capital here). ;-)

We watched a bit of the Super Bowl on the one American channel that didn't have the Canadian ads superimposed on it -- a few of the ads weren't bad, but some of them left us shrugging our shoulders and shaking our heads....

Killing widows and orphans... It's traditional typographic language, where's the harm? If You do find "colourful language" offensive this was probably never meant for you in the first place anyway –

ƒ

Fredo, this ad is one of the more innocent of its genre, and in itself wouldn't be so bad. But if you saw the whole trend, you'd know what we mean.

Yeah, I didn’t find anything insulting there, either. But then again, I don’t find anything insulting in words like Christmas, holiday, deaf or black.

Strictly speaking, one would be rescuing them from isolation, rather than killing them.

I actually liked the tongue-in-cheek attitude, but I can see where people who don't know the jargon would be offended.

In fact, "I kill widows and orphans" would be a great tagline for any editor worth their salt, so long as they didn't want to p*ss off potential clients....

I guess this reads differently in the US. First, we are in a war in which a lot of widows and orphans are being created, and others being killed. This is a grim and horrible reality we see every day on the news.

Secondly, let me give you the flavor of the ads we see. Here is one from the Superbowl yesterday.

The premise of this series of beer ads is that their beer is so good that people will do anything to get it. In this particular ad there is one bottle left in the cooler as two young guys come up to it. Guy one says "shall we do 'rock, paper, scissors" for it?" "Ok," says guy two. Then guy one counts one two three, and guy two flashes out a flat hand, while guy one simultaneously makes a throwing motion and guy two falls straight to the ground, knocked out.

He says to the others at the party, who look at him, "he threw paper, I threw a rock", and walks off with the bottle of beer. We see guy two waking up and moaning as guy one walks off.

This one is extreme--it was even mentioned in today's Washington Post , but the tone and style are often seen.

I guess this reads differently in the US. First, we are in a war in which a lot of widows and orphans are being created, and others being killed. This is a grim and horrible reality we see every day on the news.

I think it's a matter of context: our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, but I don't think the overwhelming majority of Canadians are as obsessed with it to the point that anything that even has a whiff of exploitation automatically sends up a red flag and generates excessive hand-wringing.

Saw the ad you mentioned: we thought it was actually pretty funny until he threw the rock, but the real nadir was the guy walking past at the end giving the groggy guy a low five.

At that point, we both looked at each other, shrugged, and said "it figures...."

I'm not disagreeing with you in that there does seem to be a real "I've got mine, screw the rest of you" attitute in marketing in the U.S. these days, but if you think about it, Bush and his neocon buddies got elected with pretty much the same attitude.

Since it "sold the product" then, is it surprising that some copycat marketer figures it'll work for beer too?

I think it was Daniel Pelavin who once made a funny poster called "You've got BAD TYPE," that used a number of puns that only typesetters and prrofreaders would get...

He was my kind of guy :-)

ChrisL

Apparently, so am I! I wrote: "prrofreaders" -- Ack! ;-D

He was my kind of guy

By the way Chris, I think he's still very much alive! I guess my comment made it sound like he was no longer around. Sorry, DP!

You are my kinda guy too Ricardo :-)

ChrisL

William “Call me Bill” Berkson, (or anybody, actually) could you elaborate a bit on the use of the word kill? It seems to me that it is used on many occasions where nobody dies. Like “oh stop, your killing me”, laughing, of course. It just seems strange to get offended when the word is otherwise used so lightly. I don’t mean to be rude, I’m just curious, I guess.

In English, in some contexts 'killing' and 'died' is indeed use jocularly, as in 'I just about died laughing'. But 'do you like killing widows and orphans?' is not one of those contexts. That is the device of the point of the ad: to catch your attention with an apparently statement of horrible cruelty, only to turn out to be the most innocent of activities: tweaking the look of type on a printed page.

I guess I'm tender-hearted as I have never found any of this stuff funny. I'm glad to see for a second day in a row that the Washington Post has slammed the Superbowl ads, though. Today they refer to them as having 'sophomoric violence'. So maybe there's hope that this stuff will go out of fashion. I do think, as Linda wrote, that the bullying attitude of Bush has something to do with the fashion, and maybe the country turning massively against him will help change the mood.

So maybe there’s hope that this stuff will go out of fashion.

"Fashion" always does, Bill, but it invariably comes back again. For those of us old enough to remember Vietnam, Iraq certainly seems like deja vu all over again, doesn't it?

But I think it's going to take more than just "voting the SOBs out": it seems to have become a pervasive attitute in all sorts of media, not just flogging beer. Until y'all can cast off the "ideals" of Rush Limbaugh, Survivor, and Deal or No Deal, I'm not holding my breath that the zeitgeist of mean is going to disappear any time soon.

Maybe hope has died a little, maybe a lot… :)

In a crowded room a lot of people think the way to communicate is to raise their voice. And it works until everyone is yelling.

peace

For a depressing (okay, also hilarious) view of the way things could go in the (not-so-distant?) future given current tends, check out Mike Judge's latest film, Idiocracy, recently out on DVD... Among other things, there is a Violence Channel.

As an anthropological exercise, I occasionally force myself to watch a few minutes of television. Though violence and degrading behavior are everywhere in ads, there seems to be an even broader theme: STUPIDITY.
(Granted, violence and degradation are forms of stpidity.)... It seems as if ninety-five percent of ads depict people simply acting stupid. The message can be only one thing: It's cool to be stupid.

As Steve Allen put it, "The Dumbing of America."
DB~

http://www.adcawards.org/images/ADC86CFE.jpg

Well, the "reality" of user generated content does tend to make professional creatives, who are naturally jaded at the best of times, even more cynical.

This goes back a few posts to

In English, in some contexts ‘killing’ and ‘died’ is indeed use jocularly, as in ‘I just about died laughing’.

Kill is also used in slang to mean to finish, to end, to turn off or to do away with. For example, when someone says "I gonna kill this beer, then grab another.", or "kill the lights." So perhaps killing widows and orphans could be read this way.

We also say things like, "Did you see the Super Bowl? The Clots killed the Bears." and "Wilco killed when they played a few months ago in San Antonio."

Does this really have to be read as overtly violent? Maybe I am just another desensitized young man of the post-punk/video game generation.

I saw the arc of hope disappearing in America. Kennedy, Viet Nam, Watergate, Martin Luther King, on and on.

I haven't seen an upswing. I blame no one, it's what happens to empire.

Creative output is a reflection.

peace

I typed Clots instead of Colts. Violent Freudian typo? ;-)

Nah, you were right the first time.

(Go Bears!) ;-)

At this point it's more like go home Bears. ~(-_-)~

They need a more experienced quarterback - maybe next year…

peace

But after what the Irsays did to the fine people of Bal'mur, I would never say good things about the Clots. :-*

And at this time of year, bears want to hibernate: say goodnight, Rex....

I can bearly sleep myself :-)

ChrisL

William,

NPR's OnPoint Radio did a one-hour show on the issue of the changing (and more violent) nature of advertising, with particular reference to the super bowl adds. I thought you might be interested in it.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/02/20070205_b_main.asp

I can bearly sleep myself :-)

You've been berry bad, Chris, but I bet it's just a patch you're going through. As for me, I'll paws on this one.

Unless you try to muzzle me....;-)

Rim shot!

ChrisL

Thanks, David, for the link to the program, which I listened to.

When people calling in--not the host or the guests from marketing--raised the ethical issues, the response was revealing.

"We see gray, and it's up to the public to tell us when they see black and white." They made it very clear that ethics only enters their thinking in so far as it may alienate someone they want to sell to.

So the bad news is that because they have no sense of moral responbility as far as affecting the public, they will continue to test any attention-getting device, whether it is degrading and corrupting or not.

The good news is that if people don't buy, it will stop. So while in a desire to get attention 'marketing' is quite willing to be degrading and unethical--"it's just business" as the mafia people say in 'The Godfather'--they will do it ethically if they think it will sell.

What I find more disturbing than campaigns like Carls Jr are campaigns like WalMart, where they are trying to convince you that they have your best interests at heart. At least Carls Jr is what it is - down and dirty. Do I like it - no - but it seems more honest.

peace

Along those same lines is the rapidly disappearing distinction between news/information & marketing; this will no doubt become increasingly sophisticated & powerful, because all the more invisible and precisely tailored.

The good news, as William notes, is that the power ultimately lies with consumers - and yet, this presuppose an awareness that one is being "sold to."

Perhaps the opening of new channels (internet, etc.), will allow for (the much-neeed) countervailing voices?

steven colbert gives me some hope... or at least relief. his parody of the hysterical media race for meaningless and convoluted infotainment is spot on ! a voice in the wilderness ?

does anyone remember the emergency broadcast network ?