Am I the only one who is disgusted by this kind of advertising?
Recently I noticed a weird trend in advertising in my country. Imagine you stumble upon a 8-minute video titled something like “A Case of an Unfortunate Cheater”. It looks like an interesting short film so you watch it. The film is about a private detective trying to find a missing husband. The detective and the wife follow the leads and come to an amusement park. After a long while looking all over the place, they finally finds the husband, who reveals that he was so immense in the beauty of the park that he got lost. Everyone is overjoyed and they decided to spend the rest of their time exploring the park. That is when you realize… that the entire video is actually an ad for the amusement park. You just spent 8 minutes watching an ad without knowing it.
At first it was just big companies who used this tactic, and it was done very sparingly. But soon other people caught on that and started doing the same thing on their own. And that includes people that shouldn’t be doing it like webcomic authors or Youtube creators. Suddenly you get to read a “relatable” comic strip and your favorite character is advertising for an app. The ads also get sneakier, like a 4-minute video about a love triangle that reveals itself to be an ad for an Internet provider out of the blue in the end.
But the thing that disgusts me the most is an ad disguising as a long-running story, run by a comic series for children. So the people behind that particular franchise are selling this board game, and they think it would be a good idea to make a story associated with the board game that uses the comic characters to advertise the game. Over 90% of each issue since the board game went on sale is for that ad-story thing, which has been running for multiple chapters by now. It’s bad enough when those misleading ads are for adult products, but these people are targeting young children who have zero knowledge of how advertising works. What’s worse, unlike the other ads when you know when they will end, this ad just doesn’t stop and any kid who gets a hand on the comic will be exposed to the ad no matter what.
I don’t know if this kind of advertising method is a thing in the US, and I don’t know what they call it. Do they use the same tactic in the US too?
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8 Answers
I…will keep an eye out for it.
This used to be quite common in the early days of television.
The show is running for 10 minutes, the a character breaks the fourth wall and says something like “I sure hope Eddie and Angela work this out! Maybe it’s a good time to sit back with a Lucky Stripe cigarette! ...” and then start talking about that smooth satisfying taste.
@filmfann so back then they made the ad an integral part of the show or was that just some random detail they put in when the opportunity arose? It’s one thing to insert an ad in the middle of a show which is something a lot of Youtubers are doing nowadays, and I mostly have no problem with that because I understand they need a source of income and simply because I can skip it. But it’s another story when you structure a show based entirely on how Lucy Stripe cigarette is the best and how your life is ruined without it and don’t give the audience any warning first-hand that it’s an ad which is what I’m talking about, and it’s just sneaky, manipulative and unethical.
This reminds me of Ralphie in A Christmas Story: “A crummy commercial! Son of a bitch.”
I wonder if this does more harm than good for the brand? From most of my experiences with advertising, many of these decisions are done on a “let’s give it a go and see how it works out” basis. I’m curios if they focus-grouped the concept, and if so what people thought of it.
Yeah, that’s manipulative and gross. But, I’m disgusted by most advertising tactics and I’ve tried for over a decade to avoid it as much as possible. Easier said than done in today’s society, but if companies use advertising that feels invasive or particularly manipulative, I will make it a point not to shop from them. More transparent advertising is likely to get my attention and support.
I also don’t watch TV, mute commericals or ads on the radio and YouTube, don’t read magazines, ignore billboards, etc. The more you step away from those things the more you see how pervasive and unhealthy it really is. Most of us are so desensitized because it’s deeply ingrained in our culture (and what is essentially 24/7 exposure) that they have to get more creative in getting our attention, so you end up with tactics like the one you described.
There’s an ad that I catch occasionally when I’m at work and it starts out like a gentle meditation, a spoken relaxation technique… and it turns out to be an ad for lottery scratch offs. Grosses me out.
Yeah, that’s terrible. I haven’t encountered that yet.
(What @ANef_is_Enuf wrote above is also how I have been about ads for a very very long time.)
@gorillapaws I believe this trend originated from those weird Thai commercials that you can easily search on Youtube, especially the kinds that introduce the products very late into the videos after sucking you in with some sob stories. I remember them being really popular in my country at one point. My guess is that some companies saw that people love those kinds of things maybe because no one had done that before and went through the same thought process you described. At first it did receive favorable review from the public, but then the Internet became saturated with it and some people started to hate it. But no one did anything about it other than some sarcastic remarks here and there. And I don’t think people are fully aware of the level of manipulation the tactic has become, especially when it targets children.
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