Wherever possible, I resolve not to
Buy anything promoted by a celebrity.
A series of advertisements has run recently on television for a business that offers to buy cars from the public, guaranteeing a purchase every time (with the obvious downside that the prices will be pretty low). They choose to explain this not by examples of car prices, not by showing how easy it is to ask for an offer, but by focussing entirely on a TV presenter and showing him posing with his cat or pretending, with the aid of obvious computer imagery, to do fancy football skills in the street. I am not going to name the business or the presenter, but I am aware of the campaign and the consequence is simple. I will not under any circumstances sell my car to these people.
Of course this is an easy one. I only replace my car every six years or so and am quite happy to either sell it privately or as part-exchange. I am using this as an example of the pervasive power of celebrity culture in our consumer society. Whatever reason one may have to buy from a business, the stupidest has to be because they have paid someone well-known in some other capacity to front an advert. Bearing in mind the celeb may know nothing whatsoever about the products, the people who make and sell them, the technology, the ethos, the business practices and the history of the company they are being paid to represent, it seems incredible that anyone can take such things seriously. But clearly many do or such adverts would never be made.
To give some further examples of inanity - there is a high street bank that has nothing to say about its customer service or range of facilities but shows a couple of people well known as TV presenters apparently inspiring the bank's own staff with a series of business initiatives. Yes, how amazingly convincing and believable. The funniest, presumably unintended, aspect of the ad is that the bank staff (I assume they are real bank staff but of course they may all be actors) are all shown being utterly amazed at the trite ideas and stupid puns. My reaction would be to shift all my cash from that bank at once; as in fact I have done this some years ago it is no further consequence.
There is a well known cruise operator who feature a well known comedian and TV quiz show host filmed saying how wonderful the cruises are. Well, he would, wouldn't he? Offer me (and Mrs C) an all-in freebie like that and I'd manage one or two kind remarks.
I'm not going to labour this point as there are plenty of examples. Advertising is so endemic in all our media (and the reason why much of it exists) and if anything is becoming more endemic as the number of TV and radio channels grows, streaming of TV and films becomes increasingly important and newspapers are forced to fill their pages with ads in order to survive. Celebrities are newsworthy and attract viewers and readers. With the current woes caused by the covid-19 outbreak and enormous economic uncertainty across the world, it is easy to predict an increase in the obsession with celebrities as form of escapism, just as the golden age of Hollywood came on the back of the great depression of the 1930s. But that doesn't mean we at Ramblings Towers have to like it.
Boycotting those most offensive advertisers is a start. But will it be noticed? Will not the marketing people, once they have come back from their four-hour lunch at the wine bar, review the sales figures and conclude that even more celebrity exposure is the answer to plummeting demand? I always bear in mind the reaction of religious fundamentalists to catastrophe. Whatever happens, the reason is always that the people were not religious enough, not sufficiently devoted and penitent. Nobody ever opines that maybe God, or the Virgin Mary, or the Prophet or whoever is just downright sick of being prayed to and endlessly supplicated. Nope, as soon as there is an earthquake or flood1 then the finger points firmly at those who let the side down by angering the deities (as interpreted by their self-appointed representatives on earth). If having a celebrity fronting an ad campaign is a matter of faith then that faith will only be strengthened through adversity.
"Send us even more glamorous and well-recognised stars" the admen will intone "And we will deliver you to the promised land of a 4% increase in like for like sales come the next Black Friday (terms and conditions applying to all our promises, naturally")2.
This is not a campaign I expect to win. I shall go down fighting to the end, despising celebrity culture without compromise or pity. Oh, and if you could get that famous actor off the tele with the cheeky grin to say a few words at my memorial service, that would be awesome. Bless. Love your work.
Footnotes:
1. The response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is a classic in this field.
2. The more famous the celebs the higher the fee. The higher the fee the greater the cut going to the ad agency. The higher the ad spend, the higher must be the company marketing budget and the higher the budget the higher must be the salary, expenses and bonus awarded to the marketing director and his team. It's so beautiful I could weep.
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