Best Friend Marketing

Originally published as part of 'What Grinds Georgia's Gears' January 2012 Exepose

I vividly remember a few years ago buying an innocent smoothie and smiling at the twee messages on the side, sweet endearments that try to convince you that this Coca-Cola owned brand is as friendly as it is healthy. Fair enough, I thought, they did start as a small business founded by three kooky Cambridge grads, quite clever marketing really. Wrong.

Now, when it isn’t soups, smoothies or organic mousse, its department stores with sickeningly cute children, or banks that insist they aren’t robots through the medium of song attempting to get on your good side. Note: Good side in this instance refers to that squishy corner of your brain, the one usually reserved for Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens etc.  I used to consider those double glazing adverts, or my local politician sending me a letter on my 18^th birthday the most infuriating of them all. Surely nothing could be more annoying than a balding man shouting ‘BOGOF’ as you drink a cuppa waiting for the next half of Downton Abbey, and that was just the politician.

Yet these, along with those horrifically exploitative 20790% APR loan shark adverts or affectionate ‘no win no fee’ announcements don’t come close to the puny pre-pubescent whining of the child on the Thomson commercial who insists that there just isn’t enough time in the day to see his parents. They simply must book a holiday to have the lasting nuclear family he’s always dreamed of.

I can imagine those marketing execs sitting around a large table with those boring blue chairs, brainstorming the best way to catch us unawares and snap our feeble heartstrings. But, giant corporate marketing person, maybe, just maybe I would like a smoothie that just has the ingredients on the label, adverts where no-one sings, Yummy Mummies who don’t play Bingo online together and a world where Google Chrome isn’t the only tool for family interaction. What was wrong with Dad making little Sophie a real scrap book? What if she accidentally deletes those online memories or her external hard-drive falls ill with a techno virus, what happens then? Children don’t really jazz up their parents spreadsheets out of love regardless of what Windows 7 insists, and as much as The Saturdays are extremely talented artists, watching them stroke an animated puppy isn’t going to make me go out and buy a Nintendo DS.

I would argue that those adverts are even worse than pop-up’s that exclaim ‘Are you SURE you want to leave this page? You have been chosen as a $1,000,000 prize winner!’ Or spam e-mails that encourage you to click on them only to bombard everyone you’ve ever met with discounted soft porn. At least they don’t pretend to be your best mate. They knowingly lie and laugh at you, much less scheming, more admirable really.

Maybe this is all technology driven. Perhaps if I switched the television and radio off, popped my laptop under the bed and played dominoes with chums we would all be safer. Those suited conmen and women... con-people would be out of a job as we regain our bank balances and claw back our detached and fragile dignity. That is until the doorbell rings and the Royal Mail delivers an affectionate letter from that nice clothing shop offering you a cheeky discount if you rack up lots of juicy debt on their credit card.

We must count our blessings though. In America they have twenty minute infomercials where Katy Perry talks through the ultimate cure for acne, and pharmaceutical companies sell wonder drugs that warn of side-effects such as Liver Failure and Death in a laid-back ‘just gone surfing’ Southern California drawl. Back in the UK with the nauseating voice of the Marks and Spencer’s pudding ad, beautifully slim models scoffing chocolate and ‘celebrities’ flashing their wobbly bits in fitness video’s, it’s enough to make you feel slightly nauseous, and that’s before noting the irony. Maybe I’m just getting old, but if Boots play ‘Here come the girls’ one more time as a group of (you guessed it) girls go shopping, I may scream.