The Ad is a Fraud

Eagle-eye Ronni Bennett unmasked this ad for a wrinkle cream:

Advertising and Elders
… In addition to being repellent for its message, the ad is a fraud. At first glance, it looks like the lighting is harsher in the “before” photo and the “after” photo has been shot in soft focus. Look again and you can see they are the same photograph; the "after" image has been Photoshopped:

It reminded me of this post and my unmasking:

Guess Which Photo Was Retouched

I received this email message today from Amy Dresser: The photo of the older looking woman is the original.

I apologize for the error.  Chuck: Thank you for doing the digging I should have done before publishing the post after reading those blogs.

Ronni and her readers make astute points about advertising – many I’ve written and spoke about in my book, blog, and presentations:

“While we're at it, what about the advertising?! I don't mind that I get targeted for anti-wrinkle cream and various health care devices as much as I mind how bad the ads are: boring and uninventive.” - Mary Jamison

On The Advertising Educational Foundation web site you can read a chapter from my book all about ‘boring and uninventive’ commercials:

Advertising to Baby Boomers (Classroom Resources)

But the greater disservice, I think, is that old people are missing from other kinds of ads and commercials. Do advertisers think we don't buy pet food, cleaning products, breakfast cereal, cell phones, cars, airline tickets? And you'd think elders would be the obvious target for those Dr. Scholl's gel inserts for shoes. – Ronni

Sounds like my book.  An excerpt:

An interview I did two years ago on Ronni’s blog:

On Advertising and Elders

Was Bill being a Baby Boomer?

Joe Wilcox of Microsoft-Watch.com comments on Bill Buxton’s Keynote at MIX09:

Bill Buxton 'Mix'-es It Up
Bill Buxton, principal researcher for Microsoft research, stormed the Mix stage. What a start! … The 60-year-old showed that excellence knows no age, and that Baby Boomers can teach something to tech-savvy Gen Xers and Net Gen-ers … Bill roamed the stage like a caged cat. He has a stereotypical mad scientist look, and he rambles like one, too … I love this guy.

The 60-year-0ld showed that excellence knows no age! What a revelation!

Joe then makes this comment:

But was Bill being a Baby Boomer or does he understand something essential about the tactile nature of design?

What does ‘being a baby boomer’ mean?  Does it mean that you’re brainy and insightful – or anarchical and wacky?  Can’t you be both?

What do you think Joe thinks he thinks?

To help you decide, here’s Bill Buxton presenting at MIX09:

And here’s someone presenting who (according to Joe, I’m guessing) is simply ‘being a Baby Boomer’: 

The Ad Contrarian

Thanks to Christopher Simpson’s outrageous Ad Nauseam blog, I took a long peek at a PDF that had me laughing and nodding:

The Ad Contrarian (book)
by Bob Hoffman
…. Today’s marketers seem obsessed with the irrelevant. They have convinced themselves that the Internet is a strategy; that pathetic, desperate stunts are a shortcut to brand building; that advertising is a dying practice …

A few quotes from Bob’s book and my book (so you know why I like his so much)

Bob’s book:

… I read an article by the creative director of a large international ad agency. He said his advertising is not intended to sell products. The objective is to “build brands.”

There was something alarming about this statement, but I’d heard it expressed so many times before that I’d begun to take it for granted that I was crazy and everybody else was right …

Chuck’s book:

I’ll be branded as a whistle-blower, a troublemaker, but all branding is today is advertising. It’s the new word for advertising, and not a very good one. Due to fractured, varied target markets, and the scores of new ways to reach consumers, branding has become the easiest way of dealing with all the variables. It’s a dumbed-down version of advertising. You could call it instant advertising—something that has no lasting value to the consumer, or to the advertiser. It’s a quick fix. In show biz parlance, the hydra-headed branding monster has no legs …

I’m guessing that the branding circus is about over. It will return, for advertising techniques are as cyclical as most everything in life seems to be. Print copywriting was once King, the radio commercial was once King, the television commercial was once King. Now, the brightly colored, crackles-and-explodes-in-your-mouth, rather tasteless and nutritiously deficient branding message is King.

But not for much longer.

Bob’s book:

… We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them
to love our brand by convincing them to try our product.

Chuck’s book (more prophetic than Chuck knew at the time):

Bob’s book:

Of all the dumb things that advertisers do, perhaps dumbest of all is aiming their message
too young.

Chuck’s book:

…. That is my book.

Mr. Hoffman also has an outrageous blog – with some great quotes if you scroll a bit and bear right:

The Ad Contrarian (blog)
"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

International Online Seminar Coming Soon

Henry Stewart Talks is about to release this online seminar:

Latest Thinking in Marketing to the Older Consumer
For all those wishing to gain an understanding of the 50-plus market and to engage with this large and diverse group as consumers, including brand owners, marketers and brand managers, media planners and buyers, advertising agencies, media companies and academics and students of marketing.

A screen grab:

More when it’s released.

InTwoFocus

If you’re here you’d better pay attention to what’s happening over there:

InTwoFocus is Europe's first Web video marketing agency specialising in the 50-plus market 
Dick Stroud, the 50-plus marketing expert and Gerald Wortman, the acclaimed photographer and video producer, have  come together to form InTwoFocus - a Web video agency that creates video content that transforms the way its clients communicate with older consumers.

While I didn’t predict that they’d be such a phenomenon on the web, in the original edition of my book I penned a chapter about long-form commercials (or documercials) as the perfect vehicle for reaching Baby Boomers.

I also interviewed Dick and fashioned our chat into another chapter.  Both chapters are available on The Advertising Educational Foundation web site. 

Download the PDF.

Does anybody here smell a business opportunity? 

Probably not. Most advertising agencies on this side of the pond have stuffed-up noses.