Comments on: On the persistence of bad advertising

By: Blasé

Blasé — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:58:42 +0000

Instead of railing against the ads, how about just seeking some honesty in advertising? Like, “we’ll stop the boats, send them for offshore processing, then resettle them in Australia anyway, in the meantime spending millions in a foreign country that could be spent here employing Australians, for a meaningless exercise in grandstanding, scaremongering, political point scoring, and pandering to the lowest common racist denominator”. Playing in the background would be the words “What do they know of Ipswich, who only Ipswich know?” (apologies Billy). Of course honesty in advertising occurs all the time. My arteries are feeling much better since I started eating those McDonalds ‘heart Foundation tick-of-approval’ nuggets. The sad thing is that we want to believe the ads, we need to believe the ads. If we don’t know what to believe in, then what would that make us? Agnostics, probably. But that’s besides the point. We need advertisements, if for no other reason than they give us the opportunity to get up and make a cuppa, or go to the loo, the latter perhaps being a cause and effect situation.

By: ernid

ernid — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:12:42 +0000

Now who is trying to fool whom? Politicians fooling the public, or Thembu trying in vain to convince us that Adornopia is a possibility even more likely than Dantopia. They’re really just the same, aren’t they? You do not remove labels with surgical precision, I’d say more like a butcher. And if you avoid advertising so, how do you chance upon all of these brilliantly thought out advertising campaigns? So do you hate advertising or not? Do its educational pro-pig benefits outweigh its cliched political hairbrainers? I fear it is a necessary evil… like school, brothers and brussel sprouts. Come to think of it, I actually don’t mind brussel sprouts. If you cook them with this sauce and roast some hazelnuts, they’re not half bad. If Australia’s politicians added hazelnuts to their campaigns, maybe they wouldn’t be so bad. Realistically though, in terms of advertising, I don’t think there’s much to be done for political campaigns. It’s either give the public the long and boring details, or a catchy slogan… And take us to the leader. Na na na na na na na na leader!