Gruen Transfer is an insight into how fucked advertising and marketing are. These people are so smug and yet they are moral criminals. They are wrapped in the funness of the show – good humoured, respectable, highly creative folks. Who proudly take money from the population by preying on guilt, fear, low self esteem. surely this is emotional violence. And one more thing to be ‘free’ of when we consider the ‘free’ options of the 21st century.
Brand.
it works something like this. Ok So let’s establish the facts. 1. you suck and have much to feel bad about. 2. I am cool. The ONLY hope you can possibly have to redeem yourself is to associate with me. Of course I am actually way too cool to be bothered with you on an individual basis, so I’ve written my name on a thing, and you can buy the thing. and show people how we are associated. Well actually I paid someone else to write my name on the thing, because I’m too cool to do that myself. And it turns out other people suck too – so there are lots of people who need to publish their association with me – I’d hardly have time to write my name on enough things for everyone! (of course you wouldn’t be interested in these folks, because I have put a lot of resources into telling you how much you suck – you have become obsessed with your own drama, and can no longer afford to care about the plight of others. Which conveniently makes you and others genuinely less connected, slightly sadder and consequently more susceptible to my narcissistic charms.) Because we both know you suck, I don’t actually care about you personally in the least, except to track that you continue to have money and continue to feel bad about how much you suck and continue to believe that redemption can come through association with me. Because you suck association with you would just bring me down – I need to protect myself from you. I will avoid you at all costs. I will set up illusory facades: shop fronts, call centres, complaints department, web pages, advertisements that tell you how much I care but in fact keep us apart. Someone I pay to deal with you will put you on hold for an hour playing you recorded messages telling how important you are to me.
(unbelievers might think that I also need to protect myself from you discovering I’m actually not as cool as you imagine. Idiots!)
You will be so grateful for this association you will offer ‘loyalty’ but I want ‘blind devotion’. So I will consult psychologists and masters of communication to discover how to manipulate you and the many other sucking folks into adoring me.
And I will perfect true bastard genius – whereby the association doesn’t actually work because after all everything I offer is bullshit – but I make you feel that it’s your fault – you didn’t consume enough from me, or you didn’t consume recently enough until you become addicted to what I pretend to offer and never will.
And I take your money and laugh and laugh and laugh. Sucker.
Not having seen this show, and agreeing with you on the horrors of advertising (a blog post about just patronising UK ads have become to follow) – is this show about how bad advertising as a whole is, or how ‘bad’ the individual ad is (ie the ad doesn’t sell the product)?
The panel appears to be advertising guru/veterans, do they spend the show admonishing the ineffectiveness of campaigns and explaining what consumer buttons you (as an advertiser) should be pushing? Or are they actually interested in showing the ad industry up for continuing to perpetuate stereotypes based on people’s inherent, biological fear of not ‘belonging’?
Hey groover. The panel are advertising folks who provide an expert review of various past and present ads. They are proud of advertising and its effectiveness and don’t see anything wrong with it. One of them said something recently along the lines of – ‘finding an emotion that exists: fear and amplifying that and then using it to sell things is not evil it’s just advertising.’