Medium Happiness

There are some days when I take my job semi-seriously, and then there are other days when I think it’s absurd and the equivalent of a cultural zero: I work in advertising. Most of the clients my agency represents, actually all of the clients we represent, sell products that are referred to in economics class as having very high price elasticity of demand. In other words, no one really needs the pharmaceutical products our agency advertises. At the prices our clients want to charge for their products most people will either decide to not buy them at all or shop around for a cheaper substitute. So my job is to convince doctors and patients that they should in fact  buy our stuff because they do need it; there aren’t substitutes! This of course requires all sorts of stratagem—basically spinning a shitty product to make it seem better. This is the selling shit part of it. Then there’s the shit selling, which is an inherent part of pharmaceutical advertising. Pharmaceutical advertising agencies are responsible for perpetrating some of the worst advertising crimes in the history of man. Many should be jailed or hung for it; castrated at the very least. There are some, see few, genuinely creative people who work in healthcare advertising. But their work never sees the light of day; they are forced to resort to the shit sell because it’s all pharma companies know how to do and they are deftly good at turning good work into shit.

To give you a non-pharmaceutical example, let’s look at Axe Body Spray, which is selling shit but not a shit sell. Axe Body Spray itself is ridiculous. It’s essentially Lysol for humans. However, the way the company that invented Axe sells it is pretty brilliant. What’s so brilliant about it is that most of the people who use Axe are dumb (I say most because one of the smarter people I know, my brother’s friend Rob uses Axe) and in some brilliant twist, the makers of Axe have managed all at once to endear the cherished meatheads who buy their products while turning them, and essentially Axe, into a parody of themselves/itself. The meatheads don’t see the nuance in the ads and think it’s a genuinely neat product created especially for their unique, amped-up life style. While the people who would would never buy Axe kind of love to hate it because of how ridiculous it is. Everyone loves Axe. No shit selling there.

Who shit sells but isn’t selling shit? How about Coca Cola? It is pretty awesome stuff: the carbonated liquid treacle everyone has known since they were kids. But damned if they aren’t shit selling. Coca Cola runs some of the worst big budget ads I’ve ever seen. If Bono had his own advertising agency he’d make Coke ads for fun. The concepts in Coca Cola ads are so big and grand that everything gets lost in the translation. When I think of Coca Cola I think Red, Panda, Africa, People, Unite. To be frank, Coca Cola is one of those products that’s so entrenched in our consumer psyche that it’s not even recognized by us as a product anymore; Coca Cola would have to do something royally offensive to destroy their brand equity. That’s why their advertising is so neutrally bad and nebulous.

Alright this is running long so I’ll cap it off by quickly by giving props to a company that doesn’t sell shit nor shit sell. The company is Nike. They make some of the best footwear on the planet and their ads are killer 9/10 times. Despite being a global brand which like Coke would have to start killing babies to tamper with their brand equity, Nike has continued make lighter, faster, cooler sneakers, and made a hell of a lot of memorable advertisements that are a pleasure to watch. Good job, Nike.