Like the rest of you, I’m much to clever and self-aware to be duped by today’s brand of advertising. You know, the ones that tend to consist of nothing more than what-in-the-world-could-that-be style distraction coupled with a sledge hammer of impulse consumerism? Now that we’ve got that out of the way, did you see that hilarious EV commercial starring Will Ferrell? Talk about laugh-out-loud jokes combined with subtle satire and the perfect amount of environmentalism! And did you see Will’s flannel shirt and gray hair? Made him so relatable. I can’t wait to upgrade my hybrid to a total EV.
Ehem, I mean nice try General Motors. I see right through your shameless efforts to promote your all electric Hummer to the new breed of American alt-energy elite as they run us commoners off the road on their way to Vail for a Covid getaway. But…
I still want an EV… and I’m staring to see how this works. As I’ve always told the wife whenever she raises an eyebrow at me after a movie trailer featuring a bunch of naked teenagers or a time traveling hot tub, “Not the target audience.”
As a white, middle-class, thirty-year-old male, there was a time when I was almost always the target audience. Remember those days? Back when Hollywood and New York controlled the message with all the creativity of a high school history teacher with a mimeograph machine? Or better yet, remember when we only had three channels on the old boob tube and every message had to be so bland that the most entertaining things we could come up with were frogs burping out the syllables, “Bud,” “Wise,” and “Er?” or an old lady asking “Where’s the beef?” (Personally, I find that last one a bit off color.)
The only difference these days is that there are endless channels and the public has fractured into their separate echo chambers. For the most part, advertising has evolved around a single word: “targeted.” This basically means that you rarely see stupid commercials that widely miss the mark by “falling on deaf ears.” It is becoming less common that the wife raises her eyebrows thus forcing me to repeat, “Not the target audience.”
But the Super Bowl is still one of those rare events capable of luring a diverse slice of Americana all to the same bug zapper at the same time. Liberal and conservative, urban and rural alike, many of us tuned in to witness a wide variety of marketing messages, a halftime spectacle, and occasionally some pigskin ballet. The diversity of messaging during Super Bowl LV sparked the realization that certain ads still do work on me. Messages I’m predisposed toward are more likely to move through my BS filter and tickle my consumer urges. I’m still more likely to buy an EV made by Honda or Toyota, but GM is gaining ground. The “road ahead” message from Jeep late in the game caught my attention with its efforts to communicate progressive values to a rural, god-fearing audience. (I can’t imagine ever buying a Jeep, but I vibed with the message.)
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the flat Matthew McConaughey 3D Doritos commercial got my vote for most stupid and tone deaf. Perhaps I’m simply not in the target audience, seeing how I don’t eat processed snack food anymore. But a washed-up, fifty-year-old, Hollywood hunk hardly seems like the ideal spokesman for a gimmicky 3D snack food item…unless cougars are the target audience.
Anyway, all of this boils down to the truth that our favorite commercials say something about our predisposition…or that it’s fun to say “puppy monkey baby” three times fast.
At the Desk This Week
Still chugging away over here. Mostly cranking out evergreen kid’s kung fu courses while balancing the rest of life. (If you want to learn kung fu, martial arts, self-defense online, I got access to the best instructor in the US.) I’m still alive and having fun at times, so that’s a positive. And I’m keeping the fiction alive as well. It’s not the same as when I spent 40 hours a week writing, but I’m adjusting. On with the show!
If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…
[Click here to start at the beginning.]
Thanks so much for taking the time to read these scenes of Boundaries, Season 2 of The Green Ones. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from The Green Ones until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 100 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy The Green Ones. Happy reading!