So, I like gum.I don’t love it.But I like it.Chewing it too much can tighten jaw muscles and increase over all neck and head tension. I don’t chomp the stuff very often.
And I like cognac too.I prefer bourbon or scotch, but I’ll sip some cognac if the occasion warrants.
What I haven’t liked in a very long time is advertising.I don’t appreciate being treated like a piece of meat for corporate America to ogle, as though my level of humanity is less than or equal to the bottom line of my money market. Which, given last quarter’s precipitous declines, might slide me into homo heidelbergensis territory.
Most days I’m not required to deal with these three preferences at all, let alone all three at once. But twice last week – TWICE – I was confronted by gum, cognac, and advertising on the subway.
There is no more captive audience than the one found sitting/standing/leaning on the New York City subway.There is no way to avoid be advertised at, no way to avoid ad schemes that overtly attempt to convince me that my life has little meaning unless I obtain <insert item here>. Then, and only then, will I be the ideal version of me, and until that moment I will be a sad shadow of a person; in fact, sadder, since I now know what I am missing by continuing to live my pathetically insignificant and dreary life without the presence of <insert item here>.
This exchange between rider and advert is unique since riders are trapped in a noisy, tin box until they alight at their destination.Imagine driving on the highway, but instead of a stationary billboard, the ads were on fantastical Rube Goldberg machines that propel themselves alongside you for twenty or thirty minutes, two or three times a day.
Those hours of deprecation take a toll on a person after while, and you start to wonder, “Am I loser? I don’t have <insert item here>. Maybe I need that <insert item here>.”
I can count on one finger the current ad campaigns that are suggesting, in earnest, that we could be living a better life.Not because of the product, but because of our actions, which the product can and often does accompany. In contrast, I’ve lost count of the ads that sell me something with less than vague sexual imagery of all the orgies I’d be in if I were hip to their product.
Enter Dentyne andRémy Martin cognac.
Make Face Time, reads Dentyne’s newest ad campaign.Each poster portrays one of the most fundamentally important aspects of existence: human interaction – the deep and meaningful interaction between friends, family, and true lovers that make us feel more human.
The campaign revolves around our growing alienation from each other resulting from the increase of online “friends” and decrease of real ones. It reminds us that we’ve swapped the kiss for a Facebook “poke.” It tells us to “close browser” and “open arms.”
A visit to www.makefacetime.com greets with a message informing the visitor that in three minutes the browser tab will shut down and force you to go explore the “worldwide something else.” Here’s a major American corporation not only encouraging you to leave their site after a few minutes, but actually forcing you to do so.Marketing trick, maybe, but I love it. Reminds me of the rock group Switchfoot whose song told us “if we are adding to the noise, turn off this song.”There’s an awareness that some things in people’s lives are more important than a product, whether pop music or gum.
I respect an ad campaign that knows this, and in this case, I can’t get enough of it. As the train pulls into a station I’ll find myself scanning the interior of each car as they shuttle past hoping I’ll step onto the car with ads like this one, photographed on the D train.
It’s an odd thing to be sitting on the subway, often a terribly dehumanizing place, and feel rehumanized – feel like I was meant to live for something more. How strange it is to see an advertisement and feel . . . happy. Actually happy.
Sadly, there are not enough campaigns out there treating people as humans. On that same train I turned around caught a sight all too familiar to straphangers: two half-dressed supermodels erotically tugging at a pearl necklace and the tagline “things are getting interesting.” Which could not be further from the truth. This cheap, dime-a-dozen campaign is anything but interesting. And, once again we find innuendo crammed into our faces to push, of all things, alcohol; not just any liquor, fine French cognac by Rémy Martin.
I’ll admit that I’m skeptical I’ll be part of this sexy, chain-necklaced nightlife by purchasing a bottle of expensive booze. I’ve been buying Woodford Reserve Distiller’s Select Kentucky Straight Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey for years and I still haven’t been to the Kentucky Derby, or sat on the porch of a southern, colonial mansion, cigar in hand, watching the sun set over green plantations.
(And in fact, it looks far less like things are getting interesting, and far more like things are getting extremely dangerous. It appears that blondie is laughing with either excitement or hysteria at what looks like her impeding Nubian slavery. I’m not sure what’s actually going on in this scene, but I’m definitely sure I don’t want to end up where they are going, and also pretty sure that they won’t be serving cognac in the dungeon. Chloroform perhaps, or some other James Bondian truth serum, yes; fine French liquor, no.)
Yet we find countless ad campaigns selling us the same tired, sex-driven ideas about the kind of life their product would ensure we live. Pathetic.
Dentyne, at least, has offered us something else: a picture of what your life could be like if you invested in real and meaningful relationships – and then suggested that since you’ll now be so close to your loved ones so much more often, have good breath.(I think that’s fair.)
I might be naive to think that there is anything more here than a major corporate entity working every angle to strengthen its brand and sell its product. And yet, the presence of something undeniably true in their ads compels me to stop writing, grab some gum, and smooch my wife.
