Advertising. It exists to do one thing: sell! A great advert can entice swathes of people to a product. A bad ad can drive customers away. This week, I’ll be talking about some of the interesting advertising trends I’ve noticed over the past few years.
I have a bit of a strange relationship with adverts. When I was younger, I simultaneously believed that advertising had no effect on me, and that Coca Cola was definitely, irrefutably, 100% better than Pepsi. The latter has stayed with me to this day; I always gravitate towards Coca Cola, even though I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to separate the two in a blind taste test.
I remember watching the ‘documentary’ Super Size Me and being staggered when hearing that McDonald’s had spent $1billion on advertising in a year. They were – and still are – such a recognizable and successful brand. I thought surely they’re well known enough that they’d still get customers even if they didn’t advertise at all. I always thought it would be great to do an experiment: one year, just spend $200million on advertising and see how you do. You’d already be $800million up on the previous year without selling a single Big Mac. But that’s probably a risk a lot of big companies are unwilling to make. And the bottom line is, there are a lot of big companies, whose primary goal is to make a profit, and they all spend big on advertising. It must work, right?
Quick sidebar: The creator of Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock, is a charlatan. No doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or scientist has ever been able to replicate the results he presented in the film. When asked to share his data, Spurlock refused. So his findings should definitely be taken with a pinch of salt (no pun intended). However, shortly after the release of the film, McDonald’s did discontinue their supersize option. It’s quite possible that the film accelerated the restaurant chain’s move to offering healthier options, which is ultimately a good thing. So perhaps the ends justify the means in this particular case.
More recently, I’ve noticed a couple of interesting trends in advertising, particularly television adverts. It’s worth noting at this juncture that these trends are purely anecdotal; I have no data to back up any of my claims. Just like Morgan Spurlock! Anyway, the first trend cropped up about three or four years ago. Interracial couples/families. It happened very suddenly. It was like someone flipped a switch and adverts’ families went from all white/black/Asian to mixed (usually black and white).
“How would you have even noticed this?”, I imagine you ask. I’ll tell you, you inquisitive, hypothetical person. I grew up in a mixed race household. On TV, there were white families and there were black families. There was nothing that reflected my reality. From a young age, this would nag at me. It’s not something I ever verbalized – not something that even formed fully in my mind – just something that routinely bugged me. When I was a teenager, I had a real heartbreaking experience. You’re probably imagining all sorts, but this came about when I was watching the DVD extras for Beverly Hills Cop. There was a ‘Making Of’ segment, where a lot of the cast recounted stories from the set and how the film came together. During an interview with Lisa Eilbacher – the actress who played Jenny Summers – she was talking about how actors had to be good at rolling with the punches. The example she used was a fairly late change to the cast of the movie. As keen movie trivia buffs know, the lead actor originally cast for Beverly Hills Cop was Sylvester Stallone. Sly wanted the film to be more action and less comedy, but the director/studio didn’t agree, so Sly left the project at the eleventh hour. Most of the principle characters had already been cast. This included Eilbacher, who said in her interview how difficult it was for her to adjust to Sly dropping out. She was brought in to be his love interest, but when Eddie Murphy was cast, she knew that she’d no longer be the love interest, so would have to approach the role slightly differently. The question I asked myself, though I already knew the answer, was: why did Eddie Murphy being cast automatically rule Eilbacher out as a love interest? As I say, I already knew the answer, but maybe only subconsciously. Hearing it so starkly straight from the actor’s mouth really made it real for me. Just to be clear, no blame should be attributed to Lisa Eilbacher; it wasn’t her decision. It’s just the way things were in Hollywood in the 80’s. And the 90’s. And the 00’s. And… you get the idea. To be fair, things are starting to improve in recent times.
All of this is my long way of saying it was incredibly noticeable when interracial families started popping up on my screen. I thought that it was possible that I was seeing something that wasn’t really there. So in passing, I brought it up with my parents and sister. They all said they had noticed it too. It wasn’t just me.
Onto the other trend that I mentioned. This one has been far more recent, maybe in the last 6-9 months. Lesbian couples. There has been a veritable smorgasbord of adverts with women kissing, holding hands, hugging, or perhaps just staring lovingly at one another during a drive on a mountain road. The only reason this feels a little strange is that it was so rare to see before. The amount of gay kisses – and characters, to a certain degree – seen in ‘mainstream’ media have been few and far between down the years. You’ll notice that I used the phrase “lesbian couples” above, rather than “gay couples”. I’ve yet to see male gay couples in adverts to this point. Who knows, hopefully in a couple of years, gay men too will get that, “They’re including us in adverts now!” moment.
So, why are these trends happening? Is this simply a case of companies moving with the times? Are these shameless cash grabs, with companies looking to move into untapped markets and demographics? There’s probably a bit of both at play.
Diversity and inclusivity are really important in modern media, and hopefully we can continue to progress in this regard to the point where it is no longer shocking or surprising to see representation of all members of society. No matter your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your age, your religion, your whatever, I think we can all agree on one thing: Pepsi sucks!
Thank you once again for reading. Please stay alert, whatever that means. Until next time.
A Rob Blog 