The Jazzy Bahsoun

Life's our oyster and we're gonna suck that bitch down with a champagne chaser.

Behavioral Therapist
MA Developmental Psychology, Columbia
BS Psychobiology/ French, UCLA

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Movies to See:
Mission Impossible
Haywire
Shame
A Dangerous Method
Underworld:Awakening

TV Shows to Watch:
Portlandia
The Life & Times of Tim

Book to Read:
Game of Thrones
by George R.R. Martin

Album to Listen to:
The Black Keys
El Camino

Person to Hate:
Newt Gingrich

Group of People to Despise:
Fox & Friends

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Mary's Website

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Cute Overload

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Marketing Department of Corrections
Since moving to Manhattan, I have worked tirelessly to perfect my stereotypical goomba New York accent. I have relied on old episodes of The Sopranos and Rosie Perez prior to making the trek across the country, therefore my accent remains dicey with flashes of genius at times. However, given the number of apocalyptic days that are typical in the Northeast of late, I have limited the number of voyages south of Harlem and thus am confined to indoor settings to avoid the arctic tundra outside my window. The TV is thus left on as background noise for hours at a time which allows me to observe the ingenuity of local New York ads. For the past 14 years, I have been releagated to the Sit n' Sleep no-balls mattress guy, the Levitz furniture guy who lives with his mother and the Carlson's creepy 80s newsanchor electronics guy, which are staples of local Los Angeles television. It's with that background in local TV that I welcomed the novelty of New York ads and opened my heart to the ingenius commercial plugging Vito's Tux Shop in Manhattan. This is where Vito, who stands next to with what appears to be either his mother or an Albanian refugee, promotes his tux shop, which I'm sure is a reputable business. I shan't feign a typed New York accent on this website, but suffice it to say that, "ya ain't gunna fin' no bettah tux shap o-wan da east side."

This charming ad from Vito's Tux Shop, along with the quirks of L.A. local ads, has made me realize that these local, low-budget people know much more about pitching a business than the big companies do. Millions of dollars for a Super Bowl beer commerical featuring a bunch of horses? A soda ad featuring battling CGI thankagiving ballons? Mind-numbing, suicide inducing jingles for beepbeep.com and freecreditreport.com? Why spend all this money for special effects, animal trainers, marketing reps, jingle writers when local folk can do the same for a fraction of the cost? Don Draper be damned, marketing and ad campaigns have gotten so diluted that we must turn to the Vito's and Carlson's of the world to set these companies straight. Take this ad I recently received via email from Fresh Direct. Granted, it's not a commercial, per se, but it is nonetheless an advertisement promoting this company.

Now I strive to be as a green as the next guy. I recycle, I turn the lights off, I don't wash my clothes on a regular basis. But when the subject line of an email reads, "New Lower Prices on Chickens Raised Without Antibiotics," I'm not buying. As healthy as that particular chicken may be in comparison to drugged up poultry, how unappealing is that presentation? And why is Tilda Swinton holding an enormous mutant chicken?

WWVD? What would Vito do? He wouldn't lead his ad for healthy (dead) chickens with such an atrocious lead-in. "Chickens Fuh Sale." Misleading? Perhaops. "Duh-lish-uss Chickens. Dey wuz offed wid-out no diseases." Too wordy? "Chickens. Drugs? Fuget abboudit." Why bog down the subject line with such big words like antibiotics? Addresses the initial selling point of no antibiotics in as few words as possible.

The point is, were this a television ad, the Fresh Direct people would get bogged down in scripts, jingles and fluff all the while turning people off of their product. Why do you think people mute the TV during commercials? Why is there a commercial skip button on the remote? I don't know about you, but when I see an ad filmed with a handheld camera, one camera angle and frumpy looking locals, I turn the TV up. In this time of economic struggle, why squander money on ads no one watches. Invest as little as possible in ads and use the rest to help the companies who produced those subpar marketing campaigns to begin with...on second thought, just distribute the money to the people, the consumers. We're the ones the ads are geared towards anyway. Think of it, a world without frivolous ads, leaving only YouTube worthy locally produced, low-production commercials. Maybe those Mad Men guys will stop smoking so much as a result.

4:03 PM
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