Something Is Missing

My brain can be very frustrating to me, particularly when it doesn't listen. Specifically, it fails to pay attention when I am deciding whether the information currently coming in is very important and should be remembered or if I feel like it can be forgotten about as soon as we are done consuming the information. What happens instead is my brain makes the call on its own and it's decision-making skills are poor. This is why things I would like to know such as foreign languages refuse to stick around and yet knowledge I will almost never need (such as it takes 63 feet of wire to make a Slinky) is easily recalled as if it will someday save the world. Sometimes my brain has no choice in the matter, such as when I see the same thing many times in a row because like a lot of people I learn the best through repetition. Having been laid out by a cold for the last couple of days I have been sticking close to my couch and watching a lot of TV, specifically a lot of the same kinds of shows and that means a lot of the same kinds of commercials. This must be the slow season for advertisers (rerun shows get rerun ads) because I have seen many of the same commercials over and over again. At this point I could recite most of them by memory, which is bad enough but even worse is that thanks to my editor's eye I even notice when one of them had changed.

The commercial in question is for an Armor All car care kit. In the commercial a man walks out to his garage in the early morning after hearing a noise and finds a Viking going through his stuff. Finding a filthy car and an unopened car care kit, the Viking ask the man where he got the car care kit in question. Responding it was a gift the Viking responds that if the man is going to leave his car this dirty he didn't deserve the kit or even the car itself. Now, in the original commercial at this point the man's cute girlfriend comes out, is immediately smitten by the Viking and goes with him when he tows the man's car away. This is followed by a closing shot of the Viking on a throne with the girl by his side. It is the standard "girls will like you more if you buy our product" industry gag which has probably been used a few hundred times throughout the years and it works even if it is not terribly original. Normally none of this would be memorable except I continue to see this commercial, only now in the most recent versions of the ad the girl is no longer there, having been edited out. Since it wasn't really a time-saver I can only assume it happened because someone complained about something in the ad. It could have been that the girl was scantily-clad (also a car-commercial standard) but more likely because of the idea that a woman can be passed around and claimed over something as trivial as a how dirty a car is.

First off, I commend whomever did the editing because it was a very smooth job. Clearly they brought in a professional to photoshop this girl out because if you hadn't see the original version you would never know something was different. The more pressing issue is that, as you would expect, I have a few questions about this, the first of which is quite obvious - who the hell complains about something they see in a commercial? I'm usually too busy trying to get a drink and return an email in the time before the show returns to even notice most of them. But beyond that, commercials are full of old stereotypes because advertisers only have 30 seconds to sell you something and they can't waste 10 seconds explaining how enlightened this particular character really is. I understand most of these stereotypes probably don't apply anymore and stereotypes on the whole are a bad thing, but normal people are too busy to deal with them. And even if that weren't the case, I just can't see people rallying around your call for change based on something which happened in an ad most people didn't see for a product most people don't have. I would also like to know if you would complain to the station or the company in that situation (because I can't imagine either part is all that excited to take your call) and how would you even get that number? It always seems the angry people have the best connections to make their pissed-off phone calls and I have never been able to figure out why. Additionally, how many complaints would it take before they would go back and change the commercial? They say one angry caller represents about 50,000 people, so how many annoying calls would it take before shutting them up becomes a bargain at any price?

But the most pressing concern is probably also contains the meat of this issue - why would Armor All listen to what these people had to say? Commercials have such a short shelf-life that editing them would be like washing a paper plate. I know that the first rule of sales is that the customer is always right but if I learned anything in my (purposefully) brief retail career it is that when a customer calls to lodge a complaint there is a very good chance you will never say anything which will make them happy enough to reverse their annoyance to the point they make a purchase. They are just angry at the world and you have managed to be in their cross hairs that day, so just allow them rant, don't say anything which will get yourself fired and as soon as they are done forget everything they said because chances are if you tailor yourself to that one person you will lose more money than appeasing them will net you. After all, when a commercial is seen by tens of millions of people and only dozens complain that should tell you all you need to know. I can only assume they let these people rant because the last thing they want to do is give them an additional reason to get angry because that could cause them to start a movement (clearly they have that kind of time on their hands). If you get mad about something you saw in a commercial there is a much easier way to lodge your complaint - don't buy whatever is being sold. Trust me, that will make a far greater impact than the most strongly-worded letter but fortunately for these advertising companies that is the kind of thing you don't realize until you've calmed down and the kind of people who call and complain about a commercial are always angry about something.