Thursday, July 16, 2009

Advertising Sucks


I'll start this little screed by explaining that I hate coffee. I don't like the taste of it and I don't really care for the smell, other than that it is fine. Anyway, there has been much contention over the past year about the McCafe concept that McDonald's is introducing due to the fact that it is killing Starbucks. I don't really care either way, but the ads are starting to get out of hand. Today I heard one radio ad describing how once this woman stopped drinking that hoity-toity Starbucks she was able to go back to reading gossip magazines and stop watching documentaries on television. Yeah, that whole learning thing is way over-rated. I hope the person who came up with these commercials trips and falls into a vortex the size of Jeremy Piven's ego.

On a side note, the above picture was taken at a McDonald's in Budapest, so I thought I'd include it. That and there was no scantily clad women in McDonald's outfits that I could find really fast. I'm sure there are sites out there catering to that fetish... and I am just as sure that I don't want to see it.

8 comments:

diane said...

I am torn - Starbucks makes people feel like they are oh-so-cool to be drinking expensive dirt-steeped water; on the other hand McDonald's helps us get fatter for cheaper. BUT - McDonald's fries are like crack cocaine so I am going with McD's on this one. That and documentaries suck.

Anonymous said...

Is your next post going to be about how much you hate boobs?

Homer said...

I'm not quite sure what provoked that response, but I'm thinking no...

Renee said...

I have other stuff I should probably worry about, but I'm sort of sad for Starbucks. I should explain myself, but I won't, because I know I'll get crap for it.

Homer said...

Why would you get crap for it? The idea of Starbucks is like many great ones, it started off as one thing and kinda evolved into more than just a stupid little coffee shop. Then they hired a moron to run the joint and he would literally build them right across the street from one another. Not smart. Then they got really preachy (or maybe they were always that way, I don't know).

I'm not sad for Starbucks, but it is a cautionary tale about oversaturation. David Lee Roth talked about that idea once, saying that Foghat used to come through on tour about every six months. He never wanted to do that in his bands because he felt that it diluted the 'specialness' of the concert experience. We kind of see this today when we can go online and read about set-lists, what happens onstage and such... it breaks up a bit of the magic. You know where Dave is going to say 'look at all the people here tonight' and it becomes a scripted event instead of something more organic. So when you go through the Starbucks' drive through and see all of the sales stuff for Ethos water, it kinda damages the idea of a premium beverage. Or something like that...

Homer said...

And by the way Anamika, I totally whiffed on getting one of the non-nude girls of Starbucks playboy pictures for the blog. Damn...

Anonymous said...

Have been out most weekend and have to catch up on your pics/blog later...

But the context was simply your statement about hating coffee, given you coffee drinking frequency...

EBV said...

I agree about the commercial. I thought the same thing when I heard it. I don't have anything against people that read gossip mags. But why do you have to abandon nourishing activities? Essentially, they're saying "Thanks McDonalds for making me fat AND stupid". Weird marketing.