| January 7, 2004 Phone company advertisements --Is it just me, or is there a gold-mine of phone company advertisements, specifically television, just waiting to be mined? I don’t know whether giants like Spring, Nokia, AT&T, etc. are just blind to it or what, but come on, where’s the real life emotion in telephone ads? Here we have TV ad after TV ad of Mom calling Susie long distance with big smiles on their faces. We got Paulo calling Monte back in Brazil with the apparent “great” news. We got Yi Tung calling Fao Mi-si-tu back in Thailand apparently the happiest man alive. Have you ever noticed phone/cell phone ads are like of the happiest sort? It’s like these people have never had a problem in their lives and their constantly calling people about good news. Maybe phone companies figure people will want to buy their product if they see everyone who has their product smiling and happy-joy-joy. But come on, that’s not reality, that’s not real phone conversations. What I’d do if I owned a phone company is I’d be real in my advertisements. Sure we call people to tell them of the newborn baby or that we got the job, but we also call people to tell them little Susie died of cancer and that daddy got laid off. Where’s the reality in phone ads? There is none. It’s a utopian dream that none of us, phone users, can relate to. I’d bet we spend the majority of our time on the phone telling people about our hard days, our trials and tribulations, and our anxiety and reservations more than we do the good things about us. Where’s the TV ads of Terry balling to her friend about James dumping her? Where’s Mr. Kent trying to tell his wife that he won’t be receiving a weekly paycheck anymore? Where’s the police officer calling the parents to inform them their son has been in a car accident? That’s the real stuff life is made up of. I’m not condoning the glorification of tragedy and suffering, but I am saying those are the most important events we go through in life and I don’t know about you, but I’d want clear reception during those conversations, not as much the un-realistic “Cleaver-family” conversations that all phone ads portray and that none of us really have. |