When I was younger I was one of those people who loved commercials; the jingles, the new products, the corny dances ... what was there not to love about them?  They were like Shakespeares' buffoons, jesters and clowns: comedic relief during those long programs that all too often failed to make a point.  I am pained to admit that a number of years ago this love turned to despair.  Some may argue that I grew out of my love for commercials, that I was a young and naive child who was infatuated not with the commercial itself but with the change on the screen in front of me.  Others may argue that I was an undiagnosed ADHD sufferer and commercials provided a brief episode that my attention span could handle w/o becoming bored.  To these people I say let's not overanalyze the situation shall we.  In my opinion the shift in my perspective about commercials occurred when they started to get dumb.  I am not talking only about television commercials either, radio commercials may surpass those on television in their level of stupidity and their lack of subtlety. 

Maybe I am being nostalgic for the days when products sold themselves and I didn't have to see half naked women being paraded across a screen, or dry-humping to get me to buy something but whatever happened to subtlety?  When did commercials become so dumb that I feel as if I am losing intelligence just by listening to and/or watching them?  When did advertisers decide that I am not intelligent enough to pick up on the subtle hints they give in a commercial, that I need them to beat me over the head with a point until I cannot see straight (or maybe that is the point, make people feel so dumb that they will buy the product b/c they know no better).  

In early December I read something saying that instead of commercials advertisers are switching to a mini movie format to sell products.  This new format will be a 3 minute movie in which a product isn't sold, or really even mentioned, it will be the movie that acts as a draw for the product ... ("well I'm convinced folks, that's just about the dumbest thing I ever heard" [Nick, Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius]).  Nicole Kidman stars in the most expensive commercial ever made, for Chanel No. 5 that utilizes this format.  This "film" has also been cut down to a 30 second version that is being shown on cable.  The reason given behind this switch was that commercials have come as far as they can.  They were ingenious when they began but today's consumer no longer wants to have something sold to them, they want to become engrossed in a story and that will lead them to buy the product (this is clearly paraphrased but it is essentially what the article said).  But I ask is it so much that we do not want to be sold to or does the method of selling leave much to be desired?  Rather than spending millions of dollars on creating vast stories that are intended to get me so caught up in the storyline that I have to have a product why not try going back to an earlier commercial formula, one that treated the consumer as an intelligent member of society, so intelligent that they knew that it would be stupid of them not to have the product in question. 

Well all I can say is thank goodness that flyers still possess that "je ne sais quoi" that keeps me waiting anxiously for their delivery every week or else I might be rallying to have all forms of advertising banned until executives decide to treat us like the intelligent people we are and not the mindless idiots they want us to be.