[ Golden Gater Online - October 23, 1997 ]
The lowest forms of life are often found on the other end of a telephone line. Pushy salesmen, persistent Chronicle subscription-hawkers, election-time political surveyors, and worst of all -- market researchers.
This time they were looking for my roommate. It seems he completed one of those customer-survey cards handed out at bars and clubs in exchange for a free drink, or pack of cigarettes, or sticker, or whatever. He made the mistake of giving them his real name and number, and the badgering phone call was the end result.
So anyway, it was those guys at Johnnie Walker. They wanted to know what my roommate thought of their latest ad campaign, which includes a local-bar blitzkrieg -- they stomp into bars dressed as a multicultural Scottish caber-toss team, complete with a kilted Japanese guy playing the bagpipes, offering loads of merchandise and a free shot of Johnnie Walker Red Label if the card is filled out.
Johnnie Walker. This is the same company that puts up my least-favorite billboards. You know the ones, they all carry San Francisco-oriented messages; "Politically Correct? Here's to just being right," "Relax. The fur's fake. The drink is real," and "For the last time: it's not a lifestyle, it's a life." While the latter could be acceptable if it meant being a drunk is not a lifestyle, but rather a life, the swinging one-gender party depicted on the ad reveals the true target audience.
What's this supposed to do? Make Johnnie Walker seem like a company that understands your personal beliefs? I've never seen these ads outside the city. It makes me think that in some less-enlightened, southern states, their ads carry slogans like, "I don't know what they're saying over there, but 'round here, fags are fags and whiskey is Johnnie Walker Red Label."
It's the same "We're a lot like you" campaign used by Saturn, the family value-espousing car manufacturer, and "We really care about the environment" Chevron ad men. Bank of America is also guilty, with their "Checking as individual as you are" campaign. Even the Billy Graham crusade aimed an ad at computer users. The billboard, in the middle of San Francisco's multimedia gulch, ripped off Microsoft ads, showing the familiar Windows hand pointing straight up at god, or heaven, or maybe a UFO -- after all, the last time technology collided with religion was in a Southern California mansion filled with the physical remains of souls destined for an afterlife with aliens.
These ads are patronizing and insulting. It doesn't take a socialist to know big companies just want your business. I'd rather see ads with slinky models, macho cowboys and St. Ides-toting gangsta rappers, which snare consumers with a "I know you want to be like me" approach. Or a ridiculous phallus-faced camel and croaking Budweiser frogs that supposedly sell vices to minors but really just capitalize on an inherently juvenile society. I'd even prefer being subjected to the completely inane campaign waged by Redbull, the drink that "gives you wings," than be told by some smarmy million-dollar corporation that they understand and sympathize with me. It reduces the consumer to a new lowly role ñ like that of a headstrong toddler who must be empathized with in order to turn out his pockets.
All these ads garner from me is a negative reaction. Each new attempt to side with the consumer is another aversion-therapy session. It's to the point where I'd rather drink a shot of steaming horse piss than Johnnie Walker Red Label.
Ahhh, to hell with these ad men. I'm taking off to Vegas this weekend, where every billboard has a showgirl or a filthy, rich man with a cowboy hat on it. It's going to be great.
[ Golden Gater - October 23, 1997 ]