PhotoDude.com

Sat. Dec 09, 2006

Remarkably Bad Advertising

I’ve made my income in one form or another of the advertising business for almost three decades. I’ve seen, heard, and even at times, been a part of, a lot of bad advertising over those decades. And if this guy has the Design Disease, then I probably have the Advertising Affliction. I get more amusement and befuddlement from bad advertising than I do from any other poorly formed creative act on this planet.

An example arrived unsolicited in the mail the other day. It wasn’t even addressed to me. But when a simple glance at the primary imagery and headline nearly brought me to my knees, I said, “honey, you’ve got to let me have that.”

And she did. Here it is, the simple mailer that leapt up and screamed “BAD AD!”:

Those photos would indeed represent “Remarkable Results,” the kind you usually see in something like an episode of the Outer Limits, when the woman sells her soul to the devil for restored youth. And it is usually accomplished by casting two different actresses in the role, not via actual “medicine,” as this mailer from a most generically named “clinic” purports.

Of course, there’s fine print. There always is with this kind of thing. It reads, “Photos are not actual & are for promotional purposes only. Individual Results may vary.”

To which one can only reasonably respond, “no shit.” But being a semi-professional semanticist, I feel the need to break it down more precisely. The first sentence has two phrases, the first of which is false. These are actual photos, just not of the same person “Before” and “After” some industrial strength, um, treatment, as those actual photos and actual captions imply.

But the second phrase is baldly forthright, stating that the photos are for promotional purposes only, meaning, they are there solely to try and promote people into believing such “Remarkable Results” could be obtained without the involvement of, well, Satan (no, this mailer isn’t from him, I’m sure he has more effective means of self-promotion).

Then there’s the closing text, “Voted Top 100 Doctors Three Years in a Row.” When you flip the mailer over, you see it is to promote “Grand Opening Specials.” Is it just me, or does there appear to be a time conundrum within those two claims?

And when you flip that mailer over, you might wonder again about that phrase “Remarkable Results.” It would appear that I might be able to walk in there on a Friday afternoon to get all that hair lasered off my back, get a massage and a chiro to crack my neck, a second opinion on my ongoing hormonal therapy (I think it’s causing the hair on my back), some referrals for my wife’s workers’ compensation case, some pain medication for the laser burns on my back from the earlier hair removal, and, heck, go ahead and quit smoking while simultaneously losing weight.

All that, plus walk out with a woody in my pocket … the Viagra prescription, of course. Won’t the wife be pleased? She loves it right after I’ve been lased smooth.

And be sure to ask about other available services!

Goodness, what could those be? Medic alert tattoos? Nail painting and tanning beds? Car insurance so easy even a caveman can do it?

Perhaps the final kicker is the closing line that says through December 31, they offer … gift certificates. Something tells me the other 99 or so doctors on that list of “Top 100 Doctors” don’t offer gift certificates.

At the same time, they likely also don’t offer remarkably bad advertising of this type. And to someone like me with Advertising Affliction, a mailer like this is priceless.