Reverse advertising

It's wonderful to see the marketing industry innovating even in these tough times for the retail sector. Their most recent creation - evidence that liquid lunches are not always a good idea - is reverse advertising;  advertising that makes you want to actively go out and avoid buying the product.

The seeds of reverse advertising were sown way back in the days of analogue television and dial up internet by cutting edge practitioners like K-Tel and and Demtel - whose trademark set of free steak knives were early indicators of the genius that was to follow.  Acres of warehouse space were filled with unsellable products and insolvency trustees and administrators kept in profitable employment by the work of these early pioneers; annoying people so much that they wouldn't buy the product at gunpoint.

The development of broadband internet and the Beer Humour school of advertising took these entrepreneurs by surprise and the development of reverse advertising was put on hold for a decade while people actually made money through attracting people with advertising.

However, this school of thought was doomed to failure as soon as the clients for these companies realised that the joke was only going to be funny a dozen or so times and then they were going to have to make another expensive ad.

At the same time, the noise in the advertising market rose to such a pitch as to drown out all other ways of selling a product. In this new jungle, only the Howler Monkeys survived and the early work in Reverse Advertising was re-discovered by a new generation of young Turks and pitched to a new batch of presumably insane clients.

And a fertile environment they found for their wares. The advent of in-app advertising was heaven sent for the Reversers and they wasted no time in filling up the gaming experience of every person on the planet with dull ads repeated every time the player had another go at getting three stars on an Angry Birds level.

Keeping up with technology, the Reversers have gotten into the ear of Google and introduced the unskippable 15 second ad on YouTube. There is no way known that a person, forced to watch 15 seconds of ever to be repeated new car runout deals, is going to run out and do anything other than set fire to the dealership. Whole movements have sprung up under the banner of 5SS (Five Seconds then Skip) to help consumers boycott products who unethically take up time advertising during pirated movie content. The Reversers are rejoicing because they have finally found a way to get people talking about their clients' products.

While try-hard copy-cats are providing cut-price, over-hyphenated versions of the same idea by selling mass emailing and SMS campaigns to clients at the holes-in-my-socks end of the market, the diamond standard PR firms  have successfully re-engineered whole business models around Reverse Advertising. Whereas in the days of Demtel, dodgy hair straighteners, vacuum cleaners, exercise products and nose trimmers were only available if you called in the next thirty minutes, these days purveyors of such tripe not only pay to annoy you to death but also pay to name the leading retailers at whose emporia you can studiously avoid purchasing their products. It's award winning marketing genius at its best.

In a time when the Australian economy is likely to drop down the sinkhole of the mining industry at any moment, it's wonderful to see that our diggers are ever ready to succeed against impossible odds and make good money from annoying the crap out of people.

Notes:

The two beer ads mentioned above are both for Carlton Draught and are

Canoes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptGf4sGv2EE

Big Ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6uJlI-t14

"Diggers" is an Australian term for soldiers.

Why are you talking?

Is it a common phenomenon to wonder why people are talking?

I learned something about communication a while ago and I seem to recall the concept involving exchange of information.  Listening to many of the conversations around me, I think I missed a tutorial.

Conversation style 1 involves discussing a common experience;  the weather is a perennial favourite. "It's a bit cold today!" This is self-evidently true. Anyone whose nervous system is in a fair state is repair will have experienced the phenomenon.  When two people are both rubbing their hands together in front if an open fire and are having to use a hair drier to melt the ice off their eyebrows, one will inevitably say to the other "It's a bit cold today!" What information is being imparted that adds to the knowledge of the impartee?

Conversation style 2 is about things a bit more remote from either of the speakers.  Say there's a news story about a car crash in which a family has been killed.  Now none of the interlocutors know any of the victims; indeed, the accident could have occurred in another state but it's still apparently worth exchanging some words over.  The chat inevitably opens with "Did you see ..." which seems to establish a shared baseline of knowledge.  Once this is done,  step two seems to involve sharing an emotional response. "That's terrible", "I feel so sorry for [insert surviving family members here]". This again is bewildering. Unless you're a card-carrying dues-paid psychopath,  the untimely death of another human being, particularly a child, will elicit at least a glimmer of empathy.  What is gained by vocalising the common emotional response?  Are we just checking in on the sanity of each other by making sure that we are still reacting appropriately? Alternatively,  do we have some kind of need for a herd response?

Conversation style 2a is even more bizarre. It's style 2 but the subjects of our sympathy aren't even real. I am completely baffled by the need to have emotional responses to soap operas, let alone take valuable time out of the day to share them.  These people are grown adults.  They do realise that Ted just got a better contract on another show, don't they?  He didn't actually die.

Is anyone the wiser for these exchanges?

My working hypothesis so far is that conversation is not about the exchange of information,  it's a way to make sure that our thoughts and feelings are sufficiently typical and average to be socially acceptable.

Conversation style 3 seems to confirm this theory. This is most commonly known as the "What about him? Do you think he's cute?" conversation.  Once married,  it becomes the "I'm thinking of buying a Jeep" exchange.  This is the ploy whereby we try to avoid having an unpopular opinion by stating our views as a question and gauging the response.  See who salutes, as it were. It's a great tactic if we're feeling particularly cowardly and unwilling to risk the judgement of others.

The final and rarest type of conversation is number 4; the kind in which real information is actually exchanged - and it's not about work. Facts and informed opinions are stated and responded to in kind. I've come across one or two of these in the wild - beyond the confines of the university zoos - but they are exceedingly rare.

Perhaps I might start a little breeding program.

Launching my book

Instead of a regular post this morning, I am going to, unashamedly, use my blog to launch my book, "The Princess"

Loosely based on Machiavelli's book of a similar name, "The Princess" provides advice - with tongue firmly in cheek - to girls in the 10 - 16 year old age group that want to become a princess, or a celebrity - the happily ever after fantasy of the modern world. I wrote it - you know it's going to be sarcastic and funny!

"The Princess" tells girls how to get fame, riches, beauty and happiness and asks them to consider what they are really worth.

"The Princess" is available on Kindle and Kobo for $4.95. And remember, you don't need to have a Kindle or Kobo device to read their books - as always, there's an app for that.

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00LZRKOQC

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-princess-27

Here's an excerpt:

Kings get to tell people what to do. The modern equivalent is called a “dictator”. If being a brutal dictator and stealing large amounts of a country’s wealth for yourself is what you’d like, go looking for an ambitious army officer and get him to stage a coup d’état (military takeover of a country). You then get to be the first lady with all the money and power.  Imelda Marcos of the Philippines actually finished up with 2,700 pairs of shoes this way.

Beware! There is a danger here! People who become dictators of countries and keep all the money for themselves are often murdered, along with their families. What you want is the hard working but poor people of your country cheering madly as you arrive in your coach, accompanied by slightly annoying talking donkey. What you definitely do not want is those same people taking the palace by force, stabbing you brutally to death while you sleep and taking all the cash. That is not part of the fairy tale vision of life as a princess!

In fact, it probably was part of the original story. Hard working but poor people eventually ask themselves why they do all the work and are still poor while you do nothing and get all the shoes. They then count the small number of guards around your palace, count how many poor people there are and realise that they can get rid of you and be hard working, rich and comfortably shod. The French monarchy went that way (beheaded) so did the Russian one (shot). In modern times the same thing has befallen Libya and Iraq and is probably going to happen in Syria. You just don’t get that part of the story in fairy tales, mostly because Disney and Dreamworks can’t find a cute song to go with animations of mass murder.

Sexism and Sherlock Holmes - making your lives easier

Like many in the Western world, I am being strung along by Stephen Moffat in a way that a man my age shouldn't even let a woman do, let alone another man. If I'm not digging my fingernails into the desk in frustration because the new season of Doctor Who is still two weeks away, I'm counting months on the calendar in desperate anticipation of the next three episodes of Sherlock.

Unashamedly:

And I think there are lessons in that show that, if we were but to heed them, would make our lives easier.

Take A Scandal in Belgravia. There are three lessons to learn:

• Don't wear a sheet to Buckingham Palace;
• Never take your eyes off a boomerang; and
• Body measurements matter.

Now I know that even referring to the fact that women have erogenous zones at all is a misogynistic hanging offence these days, let alone admiring them or knowing the sizes thereof. However, in the interest of making humanity's life easier, I will risk a flaying ...

Body measurements matter. Numbers matter and numbers should mean something.

I dislike shopping. I don't know if I qualify as sociopathic quite yet but I think there's a definite misanthropic tendency that is strengthening as I get older. Human interactions need to have purpose and exposure to large numbers of people in chaotic situations engaged in superficial activities should be avoided entirely unless death is on the line. I dislike shopping.

However, my wife tells me that it's not acceptable to wear the same five shirts (all blue) every day for three years and, therefore, I must actually enter a store. My immediate response is to leap from the couch and find something urgent and more important to do like sorting bolts into lengths or greasing the axes of symmetry.

In the end, she despairs of getting me out of the house and into a changing room so she buys shirts for me. This is fine by me, I couldn't care less what I wear. I think the men of Rome had it sorted; white toga - done! Maybe not so practical on a bicycle but I'm sure I could adapt. My wife, however, isn't into togas and buys me shirts. She knows I'm an XL and so she finds me some.

And half of them don't fit.

Not all of them, half of them. Why? Because 'XL' doesn't mean anything at all. All you can say is that it's bigger, in some dimensions, than L and smaller, in another set of dimensions, than XXL. The only thing that you can guarantee about men's shirts is that they won't be long enough to tuck in properly - especially if you're tall.

I hear that things are worse in women's fashion. Apparently there is a trend among some clothing labels to devalue the currency and make what used to be a 16 into a 12 so that fat people don't feel fat - they can claim to "fit back into a size 12". Tragic as supporting this kind of mindless self-delusion is, surely it makes it impossible to buy clothing.

Children's clothes are sized completely at random. Shoes, shirts, socks, those little terry-towelling onesies that I'm sorry I ever grew out of. The numbers from 0000 to 3 are assigned completely arbitrarily. This is actually harming human conversation as it's removed one of the inane baby questions from the repertoire:

"Goodness, he's big! What size is he in now?"

Who knows?

I'm a grown adult and I don't even know what size shoes I take.  Any answer I give has to be hedged with all sorts of disclaimers about how it depends on the manufacturer and if the sizes are given in US - like most sports shoes are, UK - like most formal shoes are, or Penguin - which appears to be the standard for thongs (flip-flops) and sandals.

Would it be so hard to establish some standards? My foot is a given number of centimetres long and a given number of centimetres wide just behind the toes. Are there any other measurements that matter? Size the shoes that way.

Babies are easy. Length is really the only variable. There's always a tonne of play in those things for the chubby ones and generous allowance made for the nappy.

Men's pants and shirts are also easy. Chest, gut, length for shirts and waist and length for pants. I can write all that on a card and my wife can be assured of getting clothes that fit. Or, better still, I can order five pairs of pants and five shirts - all identical - online and set up the order to repeat once a year. Every Australia Day (26 January) I can be delighted to receive a package of new clothing and never have to have listened to musak or fended off a shop assistant.

Women, as always, are a complicated mystery. There's bust size, cup size, waist size, hip size, length, self-esteem, feeling on the day and not wanting to be seen wearing what one wore yesterday or this time last week or what other people are wearing. The interpersonal, psychological stuff you can keep - as noted above, the intricacies of human interactions are not my strong point - but I am more than happy to accept a government grant to conduct research into the rest to establish an international standard. Actually, you probably don't even need to pay me - a tape measure is all I require.

Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Offended and Insulted

I've decided that I need to belong to a minority group of some kind. As a middle class, heterosexual, white male I don't get automatic membership of a repressed cadre and, as such, I feel like I am missing out on one of the joys of twenty-first century life: being offended and insulted out loud about the utterances of others and having people take my umbrage seriously. As it stands, the general attitude to my complaints seems to be "get over yourself", which is not something we're allowed to say to groups about whom we feel a vaguely defined ancestral guilt.

The problem, however, is finding a group whose membership criteria I satisfy. A recent data entry error at my university has seen me become indigenous which could be an in. I've even been invited to participate in the Indigenous Games in Perth. The ruse wouldn't last long, though. Partly because the idea of me participating in any kind of competitive sporting activity is laughable and party because I'm about as indigenous as Helen Demidenko.

Maybe I could become female? There are pills and operations these days and surprises are what keep a marriage fresh! Then, after a few moments' thought, I have to rule that out because they don't make high heels in a US14.

Well, if I can't buy an estranged and enraged group off the shelf, I shall just have to make one of my own: carve out my own shoulder chip, as it were.

I'm tossing up two of them:

Firstly, people who think. We appear to be in something of a minority as evinced by the number of people expressing outrage over this shooting of a wild animal by Stephen Spielberg

We also have a history of being persecuted. Various regimes that built legitimacy based on populist slogans and handy scapegoats and whose arguments didn't stand up to too much scrutiny made sure that such scrutineers never stood up by sending them on sabbatical to the salt mines or saving themselves the train fare and just shooting all those geeks right where they lived - in the head.

Good, I've got myself into a minority.

What then would such a group be insulted and offended by?

Where do you want me to start?

I think I'll start with talkback radio. Every day there is a never ending stream of candidates for this year's Grand Prix des Idiots Blithering who, despite being battlers who know all about hard work, seem to have all the time in the world to wait on hold to deliver their thirty seconds' worth. And they know nothing!

I am offended by you taking up my time with opinions that you haven't even thought about, let alone done any fact checking on or road tested by running them past someone that might not agree with you. I am insulted that my tax dollars and those of many others in my minority were spent providing you with thirteen years of free education and this kind of pig-ignorant, small-minded idiocy is what we got for it.

I'm also a person with a constitutional preference for calling a spade a spade, rather than a "delightfully bucolic colonial winner, facing north and offering a unique opportunity for the handyman". I have a charmingly naive view that people should state a position and their honest reasons for it, rather than trying to pull the wool over my eyes and those of my fellow citizens. Of course, such a preference has gotten me into real trouble in the past with people to whom unvarnished honesty is a fair bit like kryptonite to Superman - really ruins the fantasy that they can fly - but we, none of us, can help the way we're born.

Gay marriage is my current favourite. I think the real arguments against come down to:

1. God said he doesn't like poofs;
2. Gay sex is just way too icky to think about let alone officially sanction; or
3. I've had to stick with my shitty marriage for thirty years for the sake of the kids and, if gay guys get married and don't get kids, they won't have to suffer like I have for the social prestige of a thirty year anniversary.

For the record, I think none of those arguments stack up but they're at least better than the incomprehensible gibberish coming out of the mouths of the conservative right who are spending their time trying to pretend to be flexible, compassionate, rational people. I hear things like "Marriage is primarily a religious tradition and we shouldn't interfere with it.", "The purpose of marriage is to provide a stable home for children that obviously gay people can't have" and "Society just isn't ready for such a move". I am offended and insulted. The runners up in the year 9 regional debating tournament could put paid to those before the second speaker had even heaved himself to his hind legs to address the audience.

If you don't like homosexuality, just say so. I will be checking, however, to see what you've been looking at on the internet. If more than one woman is involved, I think I'm within my rights to question the moral basis of your stance.

I am also insulted that you, our national leaders, would think that I would accept that the review you've commissioned into the state of the economy / school sector / trades unions or whatever is actually honest, unbiased and at arms length. Every government since I can remember has had a face like the amazed housewife in the detergent ads when they get into office and see the state of the books.They then hold an inquiry with all the judicial credibility of the Salem Witch Trials and announce, reluctantly, that they won't be able to afford any of the things they promised because of the parlous state the other guys left the finances in.

The fact that you go on TV and pretend you knew nothing about it and that your inquiry was anything but the purest show is offensive.

In fact, I think I'll join both groups. I'm looking forward to bathing in the warm glow of self-righteousness - and suing talkback radio hosts.

Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Notes

Helen Demidenko (aka Helen Darville) caused a minor scandal in Australia when she published a book called "The Hand That Signed the Paper" and won some awards for it. At the time she claimed she came from a Ukrainian family - Ukrainian people being the subject of the novel. It turned out that she was about as Ukrainian as Mao Tse Tung.

The line about the spade comes from John Clarke's piece on real estate agents. View here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbFlstJ4u8E

The curse of nothing to do

Sitting here this morning, thinking about a blog post and concentration eludes me. Because it's too early and the valves that operate my 1970s brain haven't warmed up yet? That may be part of it but the most of it is because my children don't realise that I haven't activated them yet.

 Rather than waiting until I press the "go" button, they're like the Borg - coming alive in their regeneration cubicle things and wandering the corridors, demanding that "resistance is futile" and that I will give them breakfast or attention, or forcing me to intervene before they start trying to implant mechanical elements into each other's faces.

Beam me out of here, Scotty!

So what would be perfect? To extend the metaphor, what would my holodeck look like?

Right now the idea of doing nothing sounds just perfect. I am thinking that I could just lie there, staring at the ceiling and I could do ... nothing.

And one of the great tragedies of the human condition is that it wouldn't last. I just can't do nothing for any length of time. It's something that retirees the world over have discovered. The great longed for fishing trip has been had, after 6 months of pretending, you realise that you don't really like golf all that much (and I can't blame you there), growing tomatoes turned out not to need all your concentration and your wife really can't cope with you being in the house all day, every day. So you go back to work - a failed retiree. You just can't do nothing.

So can I do slightly more than nothing - just enough to stop the engine from stalling? Read a Tom Clancy novel or something by Dan Brown? Engage in enraged debate on the internet about things that are really none of my business? Perhaps one more top ten list of ways to solve another of my overwhelming first world problems - coping with the fact that not everyone likes the cut of my pyjamas or something like that.

Nope. My mind rebels against stupidity and works itself up into a state about it to such a level that putting the Lego ship back together for the fourth time in 20 minutes seems preferable.

Perfection, I think, involves having a good balance of meaningful things to do, exercise and cups of coffee. Finish the day off with a classical music concert of some kind on the radio - reading a good book, satisfied in the knowledge that I've made some contribution to the world, expanded my mind a little and not overdone it.

And very limited and controlled contact with other people.

Especially my children. I love them dearly but, at the moment, my two year old is covering me in "Sign here" stickies that he's found somewhere and I'm being forced to watch "Dumb ways to die - Minecraft Parody" by the next up in the pecking order.

Is this set-up some kind of divine joke? God tests us with endless distractions and annoyances and then, if we deal with all of that without becoming homicidal, we get eternal retirement growing celestial tomatoes and annoying our spouses by taking up the harp to give ourselves something to do.

The bagpipes. Invented by Scottish men to get out of doing jobs around the house. "Take those bloody things outside - take them up on a hill or something - you're making too much noise in here!"

Mary had kids. Maybe she can help us deal with God's landmine-in-a-whoopie-cushion sense of humour:

To thee do we cry
Poor banished children of Eve
To thee do we send forth our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate
Thine eyes of mercy towards us
And after this, our exile ...

Salve Regina.

Notes:

The first still is from Bomfunk's "Freestyler" - a clip in which a kid uses a mini-disc remote control to pause people in the world around him. That's right, "mini-disc" kids, technology from the olden days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymNFyxvIdaM

Dumb Ways to Die started as a railway safety ad for the Melbourne Metro but went viral in a big way. In case you haven't seen it - or just want another laugh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw

Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings - Australian Eastern Standard Time. Please share with your friends.