The terrible truth in advertising

Ooshies and minis: A shopping must-have for some. A foreign language for others. Pictures: Supplied

You’re never too old to learn, or so it is said. I’m here to tell you that is a lie. There comes a time in your life when no one is keen to appraise you of anything.

I was at the check out at Woolworths a couple of weeks ago. I spied several large cardboard boxes open on the floor containing what seemed to be hundreds of bright orange sachets. A curious fellow by nature, I felt I had to inquire.

“What’s in the boxes?”

The woman at the register woman looked me up and down and performed a quick carbon dating exercise.

“It’s erm … nothing for you to worry about.”

What was in the boxes was on a need-to-know basis and it had been determined that I didn’t need to know.

Not only that, it seemed I was too old to need to know.

It was explained to me later by young people. The boxes and the orange sachets that were piled therein were ooshies. I had to look them up.

They are plastic statuettes of animals. A lot of lions. A baboon or two. Penguins possibly. It was only when I saw my young nephew’s large collection of ooshies last week that I understood they were part of a joint promotion from Woollies and Disney’s new movie, The Lion King.

If there’s one thing even people of my age don’t need to be told, it is that if Woolies is hell bent on a cash grab exercise, it’s stepsister across the road, Coles, will be doing something similar.

True enough, Coles had created another parental nightmare. Coles was busily underway with its Little Shop promotion Mk II where tiny plastic versions of supermarket products were doled out depending on how many real supermarket products had been purchased. It makes no sense to me but it must have made sense to some because the earlier promotion raised Coles’ revenue by a reported $200 million, give or take a few bob.

We are all used to the baffling notion that almost every day on the calendar is dubiously ascribed to a disease, disorder or some feel good enterprise as if our empathy can only run to a day out of every 365.

For example, there is a world toilet day in November which means we’ll be busting by the time that comes around.

But this year there was an entire month set aside for the ruthless condemnation of plastics. With the plastic shopping bag ban now in place all over the country, Plastic Free July duly came and went with both major retailers painting themselves as perfect corporate citizens while unleashing several kilotonnes of superfluous polycarbonates that necessarily will find its way into the alimentary canals of the entire global food chain.

Apparently, as humans we have already digested enough micro plastic to make the medical fraternity furrow their brows. Any more and we can look forward to egesting an especially redolent form of Play Doh at some point in future.

We could have fun with it and use those little cutters — star shapes, hearts, spheres. Collect the whole set.

Living in regional Australia as I do means regional television advertising and lots of it.

Cheap rant rants

Not for these small regional businesses the desperate, almost unfathomable attempts at what advertisers refer to as branding, an especially obnoxious form of advertising, driving viewers mad wondering what product, good or service is being knocked out until finally the company logo appears on screen.

This brings to mind the Simpsons episode when Homer was moonlighting as Mr Plow, clearing Springfield’s driveways of snow. Conned into advertising his service by an advertising sharp, the ad featured glimpses of a female eyeball magnified through a shattered snow cone with operatic music playing in the background.

Huddled on the couch in the wee hours to watch the one and only screening Homer could afford, Lisa asks, “Was that your ad, Dad?”

“I don’t know,” Homer replies, a step or two up from his usual befuddlement.

I made some inquiries and the rates for regional television advertising are astonishingly low. On some channels and in the dead of night, a twenty second ad can run for as little as $100.

The only other advertising overhead to small regional business is the cost of producing the advertisements but this is happily kept at a minimum using still images, dodgy footage shot on iPhones and a cheery vacuous jingle which happily gives mediocre tree change songwriters a reason to live.

It is advertising as a kind of vanity project where mum and dad and sometimes the kids appear in the hope one’s friends and family will call excitedly with a cheery, “I saw you on television last night.” Only no one will call because the ad runs at three o’clock in the morning.

In my neck of the woods, one ad plays regularly through breaks in the AFL.

“Steel! Steel! Steel!” the voice over shrieks in falsetto before returning to baritone and explaining there is a steel fabrication business just out of Wagga who want your business.

I know a bit about advertising techniques and the caterwauling, urgent tone is normally associated with attempts to create consumer impulse, a form of advertising much loved by fast food companies around lunch time.

But in the steel extrusion caper my guess is it has less utility unless the business anticipates its car park filling to the brim with feverish men charging in demanding, “I need a cattle crush. Right now.”

Nobody wants to sell to me anymore

But not even on regional advertising with its rare hits and amusing misses, is anyone compelling me to buy anything.

I realise that I’ve hit a demographic where no one wants to sell to me anymore. Tactfully, I call it the 55 — 70 group. Maybe it is thought we already have enough stuff and possibly also that we have been around the block too many times to be huckstered into shelling out our hard earned for a bunch of piddling crap.

Interestingly, once you pass 70, advertisers return albeit in niche form, spruiking funeral homes (funeral insurers have long ago given up on you). After that it’s just scam artists who shun televising advertising, preferring the old foot in the door technique.

My elderly mother was beset by a door to door traveller who wanted to flog her a mattress for an incredibly low price. This is an old gypsy con remade in Australia and run by people who need their arses kicked before, during and after a long stint in prison. The trick is the ‘new’ mattress has been yanked from the tip, dripping with bodily fluids and disease, and quickly repackaged with a new mattress veneer.

I had to speak very roughly to the salesman over the telephone, replete with threats of violent arrest, and shameful exposure. He argued the toss only briefly before leaving the scene of the crime.

And you know what’s worse? He didn’t even try to sell me anything.