The Revolution Will Not Be Advertised

Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal analysis of American Society, "Democracy in America", made the acute observation (in 1830) that in a society in which everyone wants to get ahead it is logically impossible for everyone to get ahead. Some will be left behind. If you define success in your society on others doing worse than you then you will, as a society, have set yourself up for failure.

People will take increasingly larger risks as they see others, who they consider less able, to be more successful through shear luck. Given de Tocqueville wrote this at the same time that Marx wrote "Das Kapital" I think we should talk about the new Alexism rather than Marxism.

Another Frenchman, Alain de Botton, wrote an equally insightful book "Status Anxiety" in 1998 in which he argued that most people are ultimately tied to defining their success in terms of other peoples' failure. It is a very weird world we live in the West that we do this when there are so many people who live on a pittance - several cents a day - and all we worry about is that the person next door has a nicer beach house.

Why is this about advertising? Because advertising has two paradigms. The first is that they are giving it away for free. To everyone. The second is that in buying their product you are one of the cool people who gets it and is getting ahead.

Update: A programme on advertising last week called "The Persuaders" said there are two sorts of advertising. The first is stuff given away for free and the second is where they flatter you by making you feel like you are in on the joke. This is what viral marketing is about as they want you to talk about what you saw and mention the brand at the same time hence increasing brand awareness which is the only metric for success that advertisers care about, well that and industry awards for creative campaigns that never happened. Increased client sales is a distant third. As I suspected.

Is White the New Black?

Having lived in the UK and US on or off for the last 8 years one of the things that is noticeable is the absence of mixed race couples in US advertising whereas in the UK it is entirely unremarkable. In London, where I lived until recently, based on looking at couples on the Underground, mixed race couples seemed to make up about 30% (very approximately) of couples where at least one of the partners was black. This seems to be about the same percentage I have seen in (entirely uncontroversial) UK advertising. I have never seen a mixed race couple in a US advert.

Will Obama's election change attitudes in the U.S. to miscegenation in advertising?

Cool Mule

Stubborn Mule aka The Raw Prawn has cast his observant eye over some telling logos. Are we looking at a post-Obama resurrection of the signifier/signified paradigm? Madbreak approves. 

He plans to sacrifice a chicken (or at least buy a Red Rooster chicken roll) tonight and read the.... errm....crumbs.

Official - it's an Obavalanche!

One of the interesting aspects of the late stages of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election has been a reluctance by the punditocracy to call this as a knock-down 60-40 victory for Obama. 

Despite polls which show him not just leading in the blue and purple states but a few red ones as well. Whether it's a "knock on wood" or Bradley effect or vague references to a (so far) hidden racist backlash who knows. 

There has been a late move by the media to declare a late move to McCain and last minute need for the American public to reconsider their vote and buy more newspapers. I wonder if this will be the last election in which the treemedia figure?

By the time  Americans finish voting on Tuesday it will already be Wednesday lunchtime here in Bondi Towers but we promise to keep the result a secret.

(Update: Flugelhorns all round. I called it first)

Too Much Soap - Not Enough Hope

The Obamamercial - a paid 30 min spot on prime time tv - in the U.S. has understandably attracted a lot of comment. Now I have as big a man crush on Obama as the next guy (unless the guy's name is Joe the Plumber) but I found it a bit disappointing. Five families were featured and (as Obama said on The Daily Show) they were "all hopeful but they all faced challenges, yadda, yadda, yadda". I found all this a bit depressing and tuned out half-way through. One of the things I like about Obama is his sly sense of humour ,which comes through in his book "The Audacity of Hope". This includes the mustard story. You have to remember at this stage state senator Obama was just traveling around Illinois, solo, meeting folks, without any expectation he would one day be the Democrat Presidential Nominee.

 I am hoping that it is just his advisers trying to make him look serious and Presidential.

Someone Here pointed out that the opening of the Obamamercial featured the flugelhorn. On listening again I am not so sure. It sounds a bit like a French horn to me though if it was a French horn I am sure Fox would have run with the story by now.

The flugelhorn is of course famous for the opening bars of Aaron Copland's sublime "Fanfare for the Common Man", or so I thought. When I was at music camp in the 1970s we played this piece for our final concert (I played the trombone) and the opening fanfare was played by the flugelhorn player. He was also the Australasian Junior Euphonium Champion. He was my music camp bestie and then this slutty flautist got his attention and it was clear that I was a "third trombone" and so spent the rest of the time practicing on my 'bone alone - well I was 12. I still have a photo of him, me and that girl in concert.

Anyway. Checking out the wikipedia entry Here it lists, inter alia, the trumpet and French horn as the main instruments playing the fanfare. You can see a video of this piece being played Here. I see that it is indeed played mainly by trumpet and French horn without a flugelhorn in sight. In case you are wondering the flugelhorn looks like this. It was allegedly invented by Alfred Sax who invented the.... guess what?

The Copland is one of my favourite pieces of music, especially as the theme of his Third Symphony and everytime I have listened to it down the years I have imagined the opening bars being played by a solo flugelhornist.  I hope that this doesn't represent the first of many disappointments that Obama's presidency might bring.

Flugel means wing in German and it is not inconceivable that had Obama grown up in Germany (and hence have been a secret Nazi. Maybe he was! We need to be told the truth etc.) his nickname would have been flugelhorn as that is the German equivalent of "wing nut"or "jug ears"*.

We'll soon have this resolved though as the Copland piece is sometimes played at the Presidential Inaugration ceremony (e.g. Clinton's first). If I can take my eyes off President Obama for a minute I'll see if I can spot a lone flugelhornist. Possibly standing on a grassy knoll.

* Okay, I made that bit up.

Post Ad Hoc

How come I have to walk 15 minutes to buy stamps for a letter when there are mail boxes everywhere? So here is an idea. No, not stamp vending machines on mailboxes. How very last millenium. But what about allowing people free postage provided they let advertisements be stuck onto their mail? There is a lot of real estate on an envelope. Unlike junk mail the recipient will actually look quite favourably on the advertiser who is after all paying for the letter from their dear friend who is too lazy or cheap to buy a stamp. And for the advertiser the recipients address and possibly gender is a goldmine of information for targeted advertising.

 

The only problem would be to stop direct mailers sending out junk mail for free. With extra ads!

Atheist Bus Ad Campaign

God may move in mysterious ways but atheists take the bus. In a move which will hopefully infuriate the evangelically religious a campaign has begun to to raise money to put ads on London buses to counteract several campaigns currently run by Christian groups.

Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist, has promised to match all donations up to 5,500 pounds. I have donated. Despite only running for less than a day they have raised nearly 50,000 pounds on a target of 5,500 so already hugely successful. It cost 5,500 pounds to run the ads on thirty buses for one month. I hope this spreads globally. If you have been in London and seen the original ads you will realise they are rubbish unlike the cheery message of the atheists' ads.