Sleepless in Midland

Advertisers complain that Google Chrome's new cookie policy will prevent them from tracking everything we do on the net -- boo hoo

Google announced plans to phase out support for third party cookies on the Chrome browser within two years.

As for just what third party cookies do, WSJ provides an explanation in Marketers and Ad Agencies Ask Google Not to Kill Cookies Too Soon:

Cookies are a way to gather information on internet activity. Websites use first-party cookies to collect data on their own visitors. Third-party cookies, in contrast, track consumers’ activity across the internet. They generate information that is useful for ad targeting and other purposes, but have raised privacy concerns over the years.

Privacy concerns indeed.

Is there anyone whose paycheck isn't dependent on it really that sad about advertisers and others not being able to track us everywhere we go on the internet?

------
2:11 PM 1/18/2020

What we watch on TV allows direct marketers to target us

A few years ago my cable TV provider switched from analog to digital and required customers to upgrade to a box that would accommodate the new system. During that transition a technician explained in simple terms what the new box would do and happened to mention that a tiny bit of information was sent back to the company.

I assumed it meant the box was telling the cable provider what I watched and that the information was sold to advertisers for direct marketing purposes. Turns out that was right.

You watch TV. Your TV watches back provides a brief overview of that process and what happens to the data. The public rationale is that it is used to provide customers with a better viewing experience. Oh, and of course, it will provide the viewer with commercials for products you might want or need. How convenient.

BTW, Roku does it too. So streaming may not provide an escape.

------
2:22 PM 10/30/2019

Tom Selleck selling mortgages says not his 1st rodeo

There's a commercial airing regularly featuring Tom Selleck peddling reverse mortgages. It's too soon to call this a good ad or a bad ad -- the test is how many widgets a commercial sells.

But one notable feature of a version of that ad has Tom Selleck beginning his spiel by telling the camera lens this isn't his first rodeo. What exactly does that mean in this context? This is not his first commercial? Buying a reverse mortgage is like mounting a bucking bronc, and he's done it before?

Grammarist.com defines it this way:

This ain’t my first rodeo means I am not a novice to this situation, I have experience in this area and I am competent. The idiom this ain’t my first rodeo is mostly used in instances where a less experienced person is trying to give advice to a more experienced person, and is meant to establish superiority.

It doesn't quite fit. The TV viewer is not trying to give Tom Selleck advice, it's the other way around.

In any event, an IMDB search dug up a made-for-tv movie in which he played a rodeo rider. The movie is Ruby Jean and Joe summarized thusly:

The elderly and fading rodeo-rider Joe Wade (Tom Selleck) picks up the young female hitchhiker Ruby Jean (Rebekah Johnson). Even though that Joe is constantly being corrected by Ruby Jean their beginning friendship is growing. Their conversations on the road puts both of them in a position to deal with their lives.

Ah ha. It's getting clearer now. Selleck is getting old and has to deal with new things as he ages. He assumes his audience is too. It's starting to make sense now. But sorry, Tom. I'm not in the market for a mortgage, reverse or obverse.

------
1:43 PM 10/27/2019

Bad ad -- Progressive Insurance Motaur commercial

For cable TV watchers, commercials are unavoidable. But some are more entertaining than others. And the TV remote is a convenient weapon against the bad ones.

Progressive Insurance currently has some of the worst ones running. It's as if they have consciously excluded men from the target audience and instead sought to alienate them. Take for example the commercial with the Motaur -- the creature that's half man and half motorcycle.

Who could have thought that was a way to sell insurance to men? Does it sell to women? Maybe, but it's doubtful.

It brings to mind the TV commercials of several decades ago about which the early feminists were up in arms because they were demeaning to women. Except now the roles are reversed. Imagine a commercial featuring a creature that's half woman and half vacuum cleaner. Now imagine the uproar.

You've come a long way, baby. The battle between the sexes is over. And males lost.

------
2:18 PM 8/12/2019

New Capitol One ad slogan -- Who's in your wallet

The Capitol One ad campaign in which a celebrity asks, "What's in your wallet?" probably won the ad agency accolades. But it soon began to annoy TV viewers who questioned why some celebrity had the right to ask that.

Now we learn that 100 million Capitol One customers' data may have been purloined. See Everything you need to know about the massive Capital One hack, but were afraid to ask.

So now the question should be, "Who is in my wallet?" And what is Capitol One going to do about it?

------
5:41 AM 7/30/2019

At least Gillette is honest

TV commentators are abuzz about Gillette's social-justice-warrior, anti-male attitude in its most recent commercial. It's as if Mad Men have been replaced by *Mad Women.

But at least we know where Gillette stands. Look at the other commercials on TV with an eye out for this issue and you'll see plenty of ads that insult men much more subtly. Take the Progressive insurance ads, for example. The white men in them are useless idiots.

Decades ago feminists complained about the demeaning portrayal of women in TV commercials of the day. Now it's the other way around. You've come a long way, baby. The battle between the sexes is over, and men lost.

Meanwhile, I have not been a Gillette customer since I purchased a double edge razor at the local grocery store and began using off-brand blades. A comment to a blog post about that change mentioned Astra blades. I tried them, and they're pretty good. Another blade maker is Feather. Both are available through Amazon.

*Surprise: Genius behind man-hating Gillette ad is a radical feminist.

------

11:16 AM 1/16/2019

Can customers trust Wells Fargo not to replace their assets with a box full of rocks?

We'll get to that commercial in a moment, but first, every few months we see reports of some wrong doing at Wells Fargo. Here's the latest -- Wells Fargo Said to Face DOJ Probe of Wholesale-Banking Unit. This excerpt sums up the recent and current scandals:

Wells Fargo & Co. is facing a Department of Justice investigation into whether employees in the company’s wholesale-banking business improperly altered customer data, a person familiar with the matter said. ...

The problems began erupting in 2016, when regulators said the bank had opened millions of accounts without customers’ permission, leading to a public outcry and spurring additional scrutiny. Incorrect fees in the firm’s wealth-management unit and inconsistent pricing in the foreign-exchange business came next.

Last month, the bank disclosed another round of lapses, saying it faces a U.S. inquiry into its purchase of low-income housing credits and conceding it may have unnecessarily foreclosed on about 400 homeowners.

I've got an account at Wells Fargo, and other than charging a fee to get copies of the checks I write, I haven't discovered any other reason to complain. I should however, recount my experience with a dishonest Wells Fargo banker.

It happened a few years ago when I tried to redeem an inherited HH savings bond. Anyone who has redeemed one of those knows that the procedure is slightly complicated by the requirement that the bond owner's signature has to be verified with a green medallion seal which some bankers are qualified to provide.

So I asked a Wells Fargo banker to please do that, and she insisted that it was unnecessary. Any teller could notarize the signature, thus verifying it, I was told. Either the banker did not read the instructions on the back of the bond, she didn't comprehend the instructions, or she was lying. I asked if she was qualified to use the green medallion, and she said "no." Please proceed to a teller.

So I got in line to talk with a teller. The teller dutifully notarized my signature, but then she read it and understood that it required a green medallion seal which she wasn't qualified to have. I asked who there could do it, and she directed me to the banker with whom I had just talked. Turns out that banker was the only one present at time who did posses and could use the green medallion seal.

Whoa, that was the same banker who had just told me she didn't have and wasn't qualified to use the green medallion. So she clearly lied about that. However, she eventually applied the proper seal over the notary public seal. It looked awful, but I mailed it in anyway, and the government accepted it and redeemed the bond.

Anyway, this was a no-loss type of foul, and there was really nothing I wanted to do about it. The banker was motivated by laziness rather than a desire to steal.

But I've avoided dealing with Wells Fargo bankers since then. And the idea of an investment through them brings to mind the commercial in which the voice-over tells us about Wells Fargo hiding the gold in another box while handing over a box filled with rocks to the stage coach robbers. Made for a nice story, but today it's the customers, not the robbers, who have to be on alert for the box full of rocks.

------

1:39 PM 9/8/2018

Bad ads -- Viagra on steroids

There's a radio commercial currently in the rotation which touts some sort of male enhancement drug. And the female narrator exclaims that it's like "Viagra on steroids."

Is that really what a guy would want? Steroids don't exactly have a stellar reputation, even if they work for body builders and athletes. But as a descriptor it seems to imply that it adds aggression to the object of the description. In any event, it just doesn't seem to fit in that ad. Taken literally, it's a drug on drugs -- like "amphetamines on meth."

And what about that warning about the damage potential of a four hour erection? Is that still an issue?

Meanwhile, it's too late to nominate "on steroids" to the banished word list. It's been on there since 2014.

------

3:32 PM 5/30/2018

Lake Superior State University banished tons of words in 2018

Until recently there was a cable TV company advertising itself as having tons of movies on demand. Tons? I wondered if I was the only one bothered by the use of a weight to measure a quantity of digitized movies. It just doesn't compute.

So it's nice to see that Lake Superior State University has finally -- in 2018 --  banished the word "tons" as a reference to an exaggerated quantity. It's about time! Hooray!

------

9:16 AM 5/23/2018

Bad ad -- Progressive motorcycle insurance commercial in which Flo embarrasses biker dad

Ad agencies pride themselves on their creativity, but the objective should be to sell widgets. That's a paraphrase of one of the lessons from one of the great Mad-Men, David Ogilvy.

Here's a new entry in this blog's "Bad Ad" category. It's the Progressive Insurance commercial in which a dad is filling up the family minivan at a gas station, and a friend of his wheels up on his bike. What follows appears to be an inadvertent attempt by Flo and the wife to embarrass the poor guy in front of his biker friend.

Would this make any male motorcycle owner want to buy Progressive Insurance? It would seem that insulting potential customers is not the ideal way to sell a product. Furthermore, if the gender roles were reversed in an ad in which two guy embarrassed a woman there would be hell to pay.

Anyway, I couldn't find it on Youtube, but if you want to watch the commercial it is currently available here and here.

------

11:09 AM 10/7/2017

That Pepsi commercial -- would a real cop drink out of an open container given by a stranger?

By now everyone has see that famous Pepsi commercial and heard of the controversy. Apparently, some political groups claim the exclusive right to protest in the street. And while the commercial shows a march for peace, love or some such, said groups took offense for reasons only a social justice warrior would understand -- cultural appropriation and privilege are the left's buzz words these days.

It's a fictional scene in the commercial, but the thing that stands out is the willingness of the police officer to accept a container from a demonstrator and take a swig. We don't see him open it. So was it already open when he accepted it? Oh boy, that would be a dangerous undertaking. Heaven only knows what could have been in it.

Even if it was unopened the can's lip could have been smeared with LSD, or worse, the stuff that killed Kim Jong Nam.

Editor's note: At least we know it didn't contain Aspertame. Robo-ed.

12:58 PM 4/10/2017

Simply Fit Board -- wait, what about that hole it made in the floor

I certainly don't want to bash Lori Greiner. She's one of the most personable sharks on Shark Tank -- there are some on the panel most people wouldn't want as a partner because they don't like the idea of groveling to an authoritarian.

But it looks like there's an important "feature" associated with usage of the Simply Fit Board currently experiencing an advertising blitz. Watch the ad at this Youtube site.

The user stands atop the curved board then does the peppermint twist to get a good workout. All well and good. But the board twists on the floor with the weight of a human body. And whether it's a carpet or hard floor, the board is going to grind into it leaving a hole or at least a worn spot.

So here's a product for a future Shark Tank applicant -- a floor protecting mat for the Simply Fit Board. Surely Lori Greiner will grab that one before one of her shark competitors snatches it out from under her.

TV commercial -- Duracell and Children's Miracle Hospital -- but why R2D2?

R2D2 is the most innocuous droid on this or any other planet. All he does is deliver messages. Well, I guess the messenger is important -- after all, the telegraph operator was an important part of a cowboy movie, right? However, far, far in the future one might think that a bulky, rolling post-it note wouldn't be the way they did it.

Anyway, the commercial will bring tears to your eyes as a sick kid receives a free toy. It's quite touching even if the toy is an R2D2. Watch it at this Youtube video.

But, the Star Wars theme reminds us there are battles to be fought in space.

Duracell donated a million batteries to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Thus the TV ad with the sick child transformed into a Star Warrior complete with movie set, villains, and most important, blaster pistols!

Now, let's not take anything away from Duracell or the hospital network. This is a great thing they did. But the question that comes to the mind of a casual viewer is, "Why did they give the kid a droid?" Any youngster who received a Star Wars toy and an invitation to join the rebellion would prefer a blaster over a droid.

Oh well. We mustn't look a gift droid in the input orifice.

Bad Ad -- National Forest Service's young, dumb, explorers

Some of us who can't sleep use the radio as a sleep aid. And we're rewarded with sleep inducing radio ads.

One in particular is an ad from the National Forest Service and the Ad Council inviting people to visit the forest. This one isn't available at their website, and that's probably a good thing, because one of the voice actors is playing a very dumb kid. I don't mean "learning disabled," I mean ignorant as in not knowing anything.

In the ad story line, two kids are apparently in the forest. The dumb kid remarks that someone left the faucet running. No, that's not a running faucet, it's a river. Then he remarks that he can't hear because someone left the vacuum cleaner on. Nope. That's not a vacuum, that's the wind.

In his next visit to the forest the kid should be fed to the bears. Oh all right, maybe just reassigned to special ed.

Meanwhile, the other day I suggested that our schools teach kids how to get photo IDs as those things are supposed to be a hurdle to voting. I've changed my mind. Maybe there should be some way to weed out people who lack minimum competence.

But just so we're clear, everyone knows it's all advertising fiction, just bad fiction. So don't complain about political incorrectness.

Bad ad -- Direct TV's power to turn back time commercial

What we see in the commercial is a couple about to watch a TV program, but it has already started. Too bad they can't turn back time.

Turns out they can. A rock star shows up in their living room singing about turning back time, and he uses the remote to restart the TV show. Watch it at this Youtube video.

But he doesn't stop there. Time continues running backward as the guy on the couch grows back hair on his balding pate -- it's 70s style long hair. Then while the singer is restoring the past, the gal's former boyfriend pops up between her and the current boyfriend. She doesn't waste any time getting reacquainted.

So what's to like about this ad? The main point would seem to be that the TV viewer can restart a TV show. But in the commercial, the current boyfriend gets a major put down. Is the target audience single women yearning for the days when they actually had live men next to them? Men certainly aren't in the target audience.

Maybe a narrow audience is the goal these days. I'm not amongst the Mad Men of modern advertising, because I think it's a shame that they can't target their audience -- single women -- without alienating men who would seem to be half of the general TV audience.

On the other hand, these days maybe ads really are aimed at narrow audiences. After all, we learned just the other day that Subaru's ads target lesbians in such a subtle way that straight people don't even notice the badges of lesbianism.

Badges? DirectTV don't need no stinking badges.

Bad ad -- E-trade customers milked like cows

Sometimes advertisers get so caught up in some creative idea that they forget that the job is to sell widgets. Not everyone will agree with this, but the E-trade ad in which Kevin Spacey plays the director instructing Robert Duvall is an ad that falls in that category. Watch it here.

You're a *young farm hand E-trade is your cow. Milk it.

Are the customers the cows? That's not an image that would make a customer want to buy the product. Let's look at something the advertising wizard David Ogilvy said:

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.

But that was the Mad Men era. Maybe things have changed.

*It sounds like he says "dumb farm hand," but the closed caption says "young farm hand." So let's give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Monday through Sunday on Domino's flier - isn't that like a week?

Domino's Pizza sent me a flier by mail -- see thumbnail. And I had to do a double take.

Isn't Monday through Sunday a full week? They threw my whole concept of the calendar into a state of confusion. Why didn't they just say "everyday?" Furthermore, my calendar week always starts on Sunday, not Monday. Finally, the time span appears to cover a full week, and while it says, "Limited Time Offer," nowhere on it does it say when the offer expires. We have to assume it expires at the end of a Sunday, but which one?

Anyway, it left me scratching my head.

How I met your mother -- it was love at first sight when she saw my mugshot

We've heard the story. It's a few days old, but it's still so relevant in a cultural evolutionary sense.

A rogue somehow got a flattering mugshot which was plastered on TV. Low and behold, he ended up with agent to negotiate a modeling contract.

His talent transcended his transgressions. What a country -- so full of opportunities.

For some reason this story reminded me of the Robert Redford movie in which he played a prison reformer who went undercover as an inmate to expose corruption. Press releases said they used real convicts as extras. So there we had scarred, tattooed, ugly convicts. And Robert Redford. What a lineup that must have been.

Good luck to Jeremy Meeks with his modeling career. May the only homes he invades be through his magazine ads and the only head shots he receives be through the barrel of a camera.

Samuel Jackson wants to know what's in my wallet, William Devane wants to know what's in my safe -- hey guys, none of your damn bees' wax

Samuel Jackson wants us to do something with credit cards. Get one, charge more, buy more on credit. William Devane wants us to prep for financial breakdown by buying commodities. One wants to know what's in my wallet. The other wants to know what's in my safe. So go the TV commercials featuring these two.

Interest rates might be going up, due to the Fed's recent hike. Or they might go down due to fear we are heading back into a recession. But in either instance, who needs more credit card debt?

Commodities are in a free fall, and aren't likely to rise during any recession that may be coming. As for a real calamity, such as a blackout from a man-caused electrical grid breakdown, gold and silver may not be worth all that much. Food, water, fuel, medicine and bullets will be in high demand, and those gold coins would be worth only as much as someone wants to discount them for some future value in a better economy.

So both these guys are selling something we don't necessarily need right now. But as long as companies are willing to pay those actors, then more power to them. Best to think of them as mere entertainment. Not as good as the Geico ads, but entertainment nonetheless.

Advertisements that don't work -- Acura "Drive Like a Boss" commercial

Some commercials just won't work. Oh, they may win awards, or they may get big laughs. But they won't sell widgets.

A case in point is the Acura commercial "drive like a boss." It features a young attractive woman singing along with the song coming from her audio system while driving her Acura. Her cell phone rings, and she touches a button which connects the caller.

But she seems oblivious to the panel of guys in a conference room attempting to talk with her. What they hear is a woman singing out of tune. Very funny.

Watch it here.

One wonders who would be inspired to buy that car after seeing this commercial. My suspicion is that young women may be the target audience. If so, is the image of a clueless female looking like an idiot to her co-workers or boss going to make a sale? Doubtful.

On the other hand, men have been the butt of advertising jokes for the longest time. Maybe we're seeing some gender equality.