Commercials Did you ever notice how commercials have changed? When I was younger I never thought there would be commercials where companies were trying to convince us to take drugs which have a chance of killing us or even damaging us. They say things like take our product and by the way it has a chance of suicidal thoughts, death, severe reaction and such. I guess some people listen because the companies wouldn’t be paying for them if they didn’t. I would have thought the only people who would take them are those who are dying because to them it might be worth the risk. Have you noticed the new technique car companies are using to try and fool people? It used to be when a car was advertised on television or radio they might say this car can be yours for only $312 a month. It doesn’t seem they do that anymore. Instead, they might say you can get it for only $99 a month with a down payment of only $4,000. I personally wouldn’t have believed this would have sold more cars, but apparently it works. There are so many companies, and people trying to trick us to spend money. Some of them are legitimate companies, and some are criminals. Then there is the government. Yes, they are trying to trick us into paying more taxes. Take for example the New York City congestion tax. We are being fed a line that it will make things better for the city. That is far from the truth. Everything in the area will cost more because trucks will have to pay to get into that area. People will cut down on shopping there because besides the high tolls this will be added to the price of going into that part of the city. Those who do drive into that area will jam up the streets below that area with parked cars to save on the congestion tax. There is one thing for sure, we are seen as an inexhaustible source of money. We just keep getting hit harder all the time. In the same vein it has been suggested the government will have to raise the retirement age for Social Security to save it. Meanwhile they have emptied the fund and used the money for other projects. With all that misspending they could easily fund Social Security if they didn’t waste our tax money on greasing their friends and allies, and supporting spending for some of the projects which are just pie in the sky. How about those incredible sandwiches which are shown in advertisements. A sandwich establishment will show you an incredible sandwich stuffed to the limit with meat on a hero or on a bun. Sometimes it is cold cuts, other times it is hot cuts of meat or burgers. Good luck trying to order one of these incredibly stuffed sandwiches because you will be disappointed. If a company is not going to see a sandwich built like the advertised one, they should not be able to show it. I am not going to name the company, but I went to one of these places and instead of that really stuffed hero, I received a hero with a thin layer of cold cuts. They were right about one thing and that was the price. One type of commercial that really gets to me is the one where the product is said to be so good you will see the results in one day. I have to wonder how many people saw anything different the first day they used the product. I also have to wonder why this isn’t classified as false advertising. Much of what is being advertised is geared to the results of psychological testing. Advertisers learn the best way to get money from you by doing this testing. The idea is to make you think you are getting a real bargain and you need the product. When I was on Facebook one day I saw an ad for a pair of super nail clippers. It screamed all over the ad what a great deal it was and that the item was on sale at the reduced price of $49 from $75. It went on to say why the item was so great. It sparked my interest because I never heard of a nail clipper being so expensive so I decided to look for it on the internet. I found the exact same one for sale on Amazon for $9.00. The ad was clearly misrepresenting an item. Sometimes advertisers pitch an item as being exclusive. Take cars for example. They use terms for some of the models such as Limited. Limited does not really mean Limited because thousands of them are made. The only way they could even be considered really limited is because the base model of the brand has more autos on the road. The idea behind this is to make you feel special. It is just another selling tactic. You probably will get more gadgets in a Limited version however. One of the things which I find annoying is the butter substitute ads. They keep saying their product tastes like butter. It certainly doesn’t to me. I would like to see a real test about the product’s flavor and if it could really fool anyone into thinking it is butter. One thing most of us have in common is love for animals. Have you seen those pitiful commercials for abandoned animals? They run at least twice as long in most cases as other commercials and really pull at one’s heartstrings. What is not talked about are all the animals destroyed because they go unadopted. If we knew the fate of these animals in some cases, we would not feel the same sympathy for the institutions showing these animals. One way for a company to get an ad to stick in your head is to create a jingle about it. It has been shown if a memorable jingle can be created people have a better chance of remembering your product. My favorite example of this is the Pepto Bismol commercial where they sing the Pepto Bismol song. It is funny and tends to be remembered when one has stomach problems. Lastly there has been research on what colors attract us the most and these colors are being used in some of the commercials. There are just so many things we don’t realize when we see a commercial. Sometimes great effort goes into them along with tremendous research. We may think they are easy to make, but maybe there is a lot of science involved.
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