Commercials

If you watched the PGA Golf Championship over the weekend, you may have noticed many of the commercials were played over and over and over again.

The cutest one was with the dog that wanted to keep his bone secure. It was an advertisement for the Travelers Insurance Company.

Mercedes bought a lot of time, but it’s their commercials that didn’t make any sense to me. They have a car speeding through various terrains and ending with a smash through a plate glass window of a Mercedes showroom.

Just before the crash people are walking in the showroom, kids are there too and the new E-class Mercedes comes to screeching halt in the middle of the showroom with broken glass scattered over the floor.

If they are trying to sell cars I think that’s the wrong way to do it. The suggestion is that your Mercedes can go through the plate glass window without getting a scratch on it and if you do it nobody will be harmed. Mercedes does not need to be sensational to prove their worth and elegance.

Apple had a couple of commercials for the iphone and they were fine. (Full disclosure: I have one and I like it.)

I may be an old fashioned “stick in the mud,” but I think any product being sold should reflect the positive aspects of the item, not put them in silly, irrational, sensational, impractical, and illogical situations. Each product has its attributes, find them and show those to sell your product.

Do we really need a scantly clad beautiful woman next to the product to sell it? Do we really need to crash through a window to draw attention to a car?

Perhaps if we demanded truth in product advertisements we could get a similar commitment from the talking heads that masquerade as journalists.