Vacuuming Ants Really is Ineffective

Once again, I have managed to elude the Super Bowl and its holiest of holies, the Super Bowl commercials. I'd like to say that it's because of my principles, but the real truth is that I just don't care. Yes, the allure of watching men paid to hit each other and the companies that have built a tradition of buying multi-million dollar minutes during the station breaks have failed to entice me. I would be interested to see if the current economic situation has affected the price tags of those commercials, but that's about as far as my curiosity goes.

I've thought about the dilemma of marketing as it relates to my band. I would really like to have as many people as possible listen to us, and becoming financially secure by playing music is something I could live with, but I hate the idea of actively trying to convince people that they need something they could easily live without. What else is marketing, really?

I had a good laugh recently due to bad marketing. This is the banner ad that showed up at the top of a, shall we say, popular social networking site.


They got me wrong on two of three counts; I'm admittedly a few pounds heavier than I was a few years ago, but I'm not gay and am not taking part in the whole dating scene. I'm not too sure I'd be too keen on striking up a relationship with someone over the Internet anyway--gay or straight, skinny or fat.

I should get up early and get to the gym tomorrow. I'm feeling chubby...

Rednecks loves 'em them whip antennea.

I was actually listening to the radio as I was driving earlier today. This is something I don't normally do, considering I'm not usually in my car long enough to hear more than one song per trip, so I don't even bother listening to the crap that some demographic study has decided would be the most popular and draw the most ad revenue in that particular listening area. As it so happens, I had a couple miles to go, so I turned up the volume and caught a commercial break. The first commercial played was using an emotionally charged narrative of a father describing in a passionate voice how he had "put his son in a salvaged vehicle" that had caused another accident. It was almost disturbing how mad he sounded, as if he would beat down the person he bought the car from if he ever saw him again.

Now, a couple commercials later, there's an ad for an auto repair place, and their angle was that some guy had an accident and they fixed it so that it looked like nothing had ever happened to the car. The background singers from the jingle said something at the end about "What accident?" to which he answers, "Right," in a sly, nudge nudge, wink wink voice.

I hate marketing.