Happy Smiling People

Advertising

Oh, how I love advertising. Effectively achieving goals one day at at time… ever have that feeling … your hair doesn’t shine enough, your teeth not white enough, your thighs not smooth enough, your family not smiling enough, your car not big enough (suv, anyone?) or fancy enough, you're simply not creating these over elated moments of satisfaction everyday (every second) of your life? Ah, yes the power of advertising. I’ll give it to them, they are witty and creative. The people-always smiling with wedding rings, one boy and one girl, two story house, big car in the garage, dog with a Frisbee, and its always sunny unless you're selling soup on a cold winters day…snuggled by the fire in a little cottage, (your second home) in the mountains, of course.

Do you ever wonder how advertising effects what your eating? The commercials with the up close view of a moist cookie breaking apart, or a cheesy pizza sloooowwwlly being lifted out of the pan, its so effective. I don’t have cable, so I don’t watch commercials, but I remember how effective commercials were. I knew when McDonalds or Burger King had a new artery clogging invention, and I always wanted to try it (and always did). The people eating it are always thin, always smiling and the food glistened. It does glisten, right? They effortlessly make us all think that it is normal to be eating all this food, all the time.

I did a little research…

Frito Lay.com Check out those families! Do you see the creepy yellow smiling face on the left side of the site smiling about all those chips he is eating? The dad sharing a bag of chips with his son, the wholesome family standing around the grill with a bag of chips, so normal, so happy to be snacking all the time on chips…chips chips chips, it must be normal to feed your family chips all the time.

McDonalds.com I love the girl on her cell phone, she’s so hip and cool. She’s chatting away about French fries and how cool McDonalds is…she starts singing “ba ba ba ba baba I’m loving it.” You go girl!

And then the guy jumping in the air, oh wow, how many hamburgers does it take to jump that high? And those kids at the park playing! The world of McDonalds is so bright and shiny. But, the best part of all is this guy: What is he doing? Is it me, or did his fried chicken breast with bacon and cheese give him an orgasm? Perplexing. And how many young men does this guy represent, continuing the cycle of only eating fast food, everyday?

I know why advertising exists and why it is the way it is, I just like the idea of challening ourselves and the ideas that huge corporations feed into our culture and everyday lives.