Atrocious Ads

I am not a fan of TV for one main reason, the number of ads that they shove down your throat. I have noticed that on average, adverts are given two 15 minutes segments or sometimes three 10 minutes segments every hour. So, if you are watching a program that supposedly runs for an hour, half of it will be dedicated to ads at an interval of about 10 minutes. The minutes devoted to commercials is bound to increase as time progresses, which means your television will become less entertaining and educative. But that is not the worst part. As people become more benumbed by incessant ads, the pressure on advertisers decreases. The quality of ads on Kenyan television is evidence of this.

I am rarely in front of one of these boxes, but the ads I have seen in those rare moments have appalled me by their lack of creativity and sense. Two of the dumbest ones come to mind, but I’m only going to give their gist (I don’t want to be sued, you know). One of them is a skin care product. Its plot goes something like this; a student is taken back to school by her mother, the Principal is furious because she is accompanied by someone who appears to be her sister because of her young soft skin. He later learns that she is indeed her mother, and since her skin is so soft, her daughter is hurriedly told to go back to class, and leave the two adults to take care of business. The Principal attempts what can only be defined as sexual harassment by a sane person. The daughter eavesdrops on what the two adults are doing and goes to class giggling. She too will probably start using the same skin care product that her mother uses because, you know, it will “open doors” for her. This ad is misogynistic, plain and simple.

The second dumb ad belongs to one of these many betting sites. We have a group of friends discussing the odds of the teams they are going to bet on, past match outcomes, etc. A supposedly experienced lady (Her being female is not by accident. Apparently women are more trustworthy than men, and trustworthiness is one of the many criteria used to select faces you see on ads) overhears this discussion and kindly invites these “amateurs” over with this line “Come I educate you.” She then makes the following statement “You don’t have to know all these things.” I mean, WHAT THE FUCK? Didn’t the writers notice the contradiction while working on the script? How can you educate by being an advocate of ignorance? This commercial is one of the dumbest on air.

The above examples are evidence that the marketing graduates who create these ads do not think through and review what they create. Worse still, people buy whatever these ads are selling. The complacency of consumers has taken the pressure off advertisers who are no longer obliged to make convincing arguments why their products are superior to all others in the market. The problem with these ads is that they are examples of the mediocre use of anecdotes. Advertisers use stories to trick us into buying stuff. We are more likely to relate to the story of the high-school girl or the betting amateurs than to statistics showing us who uses this particular product or how often people win bets by letting the "system" do it for them. Advertisements are not going anywhere, but Kenyan ad creators should pull up their socks and think through whatever commercials they create.