Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Advertisers don't want to sell products - they have to sell products; and more specifically their products. That's how they pay the bills and make money. Spending a lot to creating advertising that only shows the product in the background in a generic sense opens the door to the target market thinking the brand of bike itself doesn't matter. Lifestyle brands, like Surly or Rivendell (sorry to keep bringing them up but they are great examples) create a lot of peripheral lifestyle with their blogs and accessories but they still highly emphasize the benefits of their particular brand of bike and they are kept central to the theme.
Do you watch ads on TV? I rarely do ... but I see enough to see the trend. Look at print ads as well ... The product is Not always the center of the ad .... the Lifestyle that the product supposedly brings, is .... People are amazingly happy, or floating through ethereal sun rays, or romantically walking with a loved one, or playing with grandkids or cute puppies ... Shoot, Subaru ads are what, "Love is what makes a Subaru?"
There is always either text, logos, voice-overs, or all three, depending on the medium ... but everyone is sure what the ad is about. Some of the ads really only feature the product tangentially .... and injectable drugs, never. But, yeah ... there is never confusions about what the ad is for; and in a bike ad ... the person doesn't have to be riding the bike. The bike has to be there ... but what the ad is selling is how amazingly wonderful life will be, how much more fun you will have, how much smarter you will be, how much better your friends will be, how much better your sex life will be .... if you use the advertised product.
Look how many sex pills there are ... and yet in no ad do you see either a pill of people having sex. Walk on a beach, cook on a grill, eat on a patio, sip wine watching a sunset, or the classic sit in neighboring bathtubs ... no erection, and no pill.
But whatever. if you are a high-paid ad exec, I am sure you are .... paid a lot.