Ch 13.12 - Advertising
"Brace Yourself Arthur as Corporate America tries to sell us its wretched things!" (Turns on TV) — The Tick
a. Advertisements
---------------------------
"Whenever you’re exposed to advertising in this country, you realize all over again that America’s leading industry is still the manufacturing, distribution, packaging, and marketing of bullshit." - George Carlin (the invisible man is watching, and he does loves you! Not sure why he always needs money tho…)
ad·ver·tise - verb - describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance. From Latin advertere meaning ‘turn towards.’
"But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in 8 hours (the average office worker gets less than 3 hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work." - David Cain
“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct, or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." – Edward Bernays – Propaganda – 1928
"When life hands you lemons... Make Lemonade?... No. First you roll out a multi-media campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce. Which only works if you stockpile lemons. Control the supply. Then a media blitz. Lemon is the only way to say I love you. The must-have accessorry for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out. Lemons are in. Billboards that say she won't have sex with you unless you've got lemons. You cut DeBeers in on it. Limited edition Lemon Bracelets. Yellow diamonds called Lemon Drops. You get Apple to call their new operating system OS Lemon (little accent over the O). You charge 40% more for organic lemons. 50% more for conflict free lemons. You pack the Capitol with Lemon lobbyists. You get a Khardasian to suck a lemon wedge in a leaked sex tape. Timonthy Chalaway wears Lemon shoes again. You get a hashtag campaign. Something isn't cool or tight or awesome. No... It's #Lemon. Did you see that movie? Did you go to that concert? It was f*cking Lemon. Billy Eilish. Omg hastag #Lemon. You get Dr. Oz to recommend four lemons a day and a lemon suppository supplement to get rid of toxins because there's nothing scarier than toxins. Then you patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes lemons look just a little more like tits. Then you get a gene patent for the tit lemon DNA sequence. You cross polinate. You get those seeds circulating in the wild. And then you sue the farmers for copyright infringement when that genetic code shows up on their land. Sit back. Rake in the millions. And when you're done and you've sold your Lempire for a few billion dollars… then. And only then - you make some f*cking lemonade." - The Fall of the House of Usher
"I don’t want to connect my coffee machine to the wifi network. I don’t want to share the file with OneDrive. I don’t want to download an app to check my car’s fluid levels. I don’t want to scan a QR code to view the restaurant menu. I don’t want to let Google know my location before showing me the search results. I don’t want to include a Teams link on the calendar invite. I don’t want to pay 50 different monthly subscription fees for all my software. I don’t want to upgrade to TurboTax platinum plus audit protection. I don’t want to install the Webex plugin to join the meeting. I don’t want to share my car’s braking data with the actuaries at State Farm. I don’t want to text with your AI chatbot. I don’t want to download the Instagram app to look at your picture. I don’t want to type in my email address to view the content on your company’s website. I don’t want text messages with promo codes. I don’t want to leave your company a five-star Google review in exchange for the chance to win a $20 Starbucks gift card. I don’t want to join your exclusive community in the metaverse. I don’t want AI to help me write my comments on LinkedIn. I don’t even want to be on LinkedIn in the first place. I just want to pay for a product one time (and only one time), know that it’s going to work flawlessly, press 0 to speak to an operator if I need help, and otherwise be left alone and treated with some small measure of human dignity, if that’s not too much to ask anymore." - Unknown
"We don't do commercials because our target audience isn't sitting around watching TV." - Lamborghini
"Just consume product and then get excited for the next product. Sincerely, Your Corporate Overlords." - Unknown
"Advertising Has Us Chasing Cars And Clothes, Working Jobs We Hate So We Can Buy S*#T We Don't Need" - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
The commercials we watch on tv make no sense. Their purpose is no longer to sell cars, food, insurance, or medicine. Their goal is to humiliate, propagandize, and remind you of the inverted world we live in lest you forget.
“We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.” - Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone
b. Public Relations
---------------------------
“[Advertising is] public relations in an advertising wrapper.” - Ubkbown
“There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud... to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom." - Milton Friedman's 1970 article 'Responsibility of Business is to Increase It's Profits' on why corporate managers should not use company resources to engage in social activism
c. Go woke. Go broke.
---------------------------
"For the most part, advertising spending is rarely about actual 'advertising' and instead it is about endorsing, encouraging and funding certain ideologies and party lines which corporations agree with, encourage and seek to make default. It is about influencing the content decisions and editorial slant by implicitly threatening that the ad money can disappear at a moment's notice if something is published the company disagrees with. It's why when Pfizer or Moderna spend tens of millions for advertising in the NYT it is not so people are aware that Pfizer makes a covid booster shot - they know that from non-stop news coverage; it is to make sure that the NYT never questions the corporate party line. In other words, it is public relations in an advertising wrapper." - Unknown
"He [Musk] realizes that advertisers have no spine and can be easily cowed by special interest groups in cahoots with political allies – if you don’t believe me I got two words for ya – Tucker Carlson." - Greg Gutfeld
"Here's the playbook:
1) Remove God from every institution by implementing perversion (above)
2) Implement communism (which is a Godless institution) to enslave all
These ads are by no means a mistake or a marketing miscalculation" - Unknown, on woke marketing campaigns
"Sunkist Logo - It isn't Sun-Kist. Look closely. It really says Sin-Kist..." - Unknown
"R.I.P. - WHITE COUPLES IN TV COMMERCIALS - 1950 - 2021" - Unknown, written on the tombstone of traditional advertising
"Commercials are the only way I would have known that white people are only allowed to marry black people now, with possible exceptions allowed for marrying Hispanics or Asians. Blacks, however, may marry anybody. Also, I've learned that all wives are geniuses and all husbands are idiots. Except for gay husbands." - Unknown
"Ever wonder about those people who pay $2 for a bottle of Evian Water? Spell Evian backwards." - George Carlin, Evian -> Naive
"BestBuy; the irony starts before you even walk through the door." - Unknown
"Target has gone way downhill. Just last week I was there and there was a foul-mouthed lady in the urinal next to me. Can't she just hang a leak quietly like a lady is supposed to?" - Unknown
"As a white Christian male, I have wondered, are we rich privileged people or not? Because no company ever was successful by alienating those with money." - Unknown, on the recent Bud Light ad campaign featuring transgender actor Dylan Mulvaney
"To those of you who say, 'Why do you make such a big deal over one can?', I'll reply with, what would you do if Bud Light came out with a can that celebrated 365 days of being 'born again', with some MAGA hat wearing god-fearing evangelist on it? I'll answer that question for you: you'd lose your shyt, and call for a boycott of Bud Light." - Unknown
"Weird how Bud Light airs one ad with a transgender person and everyone wants to boycott them. But when Amazon airs that moustache girl commercial 24/7 no one does sh*t. It's almost like they're daring us to boycott them and none of us can because we need Amazon too much." - Unknown
"Q: Why is Bud Light having trouble selling bottled beer?
A: Because all their new customers prefer to take it in the can..." - Unknown
"A man pretending to be a woman promoting a beverage pretending to be a beer." - Unknown
"Heinerscheid said that she had a 'Mandate from day 1' to woke the Bud Light brand. Who issued the 'mandate'? Yeah, the 'top execs' that just put her 'on leave'. Why not fire her? Because then she'd have a lawsuit and we'd find out the 'mandate' came from the very top of InBev." - Unknown
"The mask finally slips - UFC is not the bastion of masculinity/freedom or any of that ******** that they always try to espouse, they are Empire through and through. Expect to see more painted nails, make-up, and dog *******" - Unknown, on the $100m Bud Light spent to be the official beer sponsor of the UFC
"The real product that InBev is selling here is transsexualism, not beer. Other products these giant multinational corporations are selling include homosexual sodomy, abortion, the destruction of the family, mental and moral incapacitation, and self-incrimination (all social media and computer technology is a vehicle used to rat you out to your overlords). They all just use different physical vehicles to sell these products. In this case, the physical sales vehicle is beer. Money doesn't really matter to the corporate oligarch managerial class that runs these giant multinational corporations. They are willing to lose money in the short run in order to enslave you in the long run. Eventually, their goal is to use their products to kill you. These people are Malthusians and Eugenicists, and by their lights, the general public is disease that must be eradicated." - Unknown
"Corporations go woke and employees go broke. That was the plan all along. Destroy America one brand at a time." - Unknown
d. Boycots
---------------------------
"Boycotting our store is violence." - Target
"it is time to boycott the boycotters: below we have summarized the names of those companies which have publicly signaled their 'virtue' by pulling their ads from X/Musk: Disney, CNBC/NBC parent Comcast, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Apple, Sony, Lions Gate, Paramount, IBM, Paris Hilton" - Unknown on the companies boycotting X/Elon Musk
"Offer me money. Offer me power. I don't care. I'll say what I want to say and if the consequence of that is me losing money so be it." - Elon Musk, on why he posts tweets that negatively impact his ad revenue on Twitter
"Vote with your pocketbook. It's the only vote that counts." - Unknown
Previous Chapter
Next Chapter
Table of Contents