American marketeering

American television broadcasting is terrible. A twenty-five minute show will have three (THREE!!) ad breaks, where in the UK it would have one. More on American programming later, perhaps. For now though i want to highlight the incongruousness in much of the advertising that takes place. Look at these two commercials and compare and contrast:



What an outrageous list of side-effects! Are you supposed to get some sleep between bouts of plotting ways to off yourself? And this is supposed to entice me into buying the product? The company is obviously adhering to American law about having to feature side-effects in drug adverts. But, compare it to this bare faced cheek:



No negatives in this product whatsoever then! Notice how it's the milkman-conscience in white who's talking her into it as well, rather than the one in red as would be expected. This milk really is the hero! It reminds me of our own nutella advert where as the line "...and with two whole hazelnuts in each jar..." is spoken, a jar is shown being opened and hundreds of the buggers pour forth.



American adverts seemed to fall into one of three categories. About 33% of them were for cars / insurance policies / cleaning products / clothing / perfume etc, 33% were for some convenience food or fast-food chain, and the other 33% were for the latest bit of fitness equipment or regime. By far my favourite of this latter category was this, for unspeakably obvious reasons:




Overall though, this next one was the one that rode fastest and loosest with it's benefits, and it summed up perfectly the juxtaposition of the ratio i just mentioned.

(This was the only form i could find the advert in, sorry. If you whizz it forward to 58 seconds, it's right there)



That's right. Watch it again if you don't believe it, your eyes do not deceive you.

Add this all together and you've got yourself your own little American Psyche.