This is Making Me Hungry

Today I came across a really great line of writing while perusing back articles of NY Mag’s Grub Street NY Diet. If you aren’t familiar with these and you like reading about food, you should be.

Each week NY Mag commissions a self-defined New Yorker to keep track of what and where he or she eats that week. The diarists range from B-list celebrities, food writers, chefs, and politicians to Martha Stewart. The meals range from extravagant dinners at Le Bernadin to Costo canned chicken.

In any case, the April 20^th issue was written by author David Rakoff. Yes, it is slow at work today. No, I did not know who David Rakoff was before reading his entry; maybe that’s a crime in the literary world, I don’t know. I do know that I will pick up his book of essays, Half Empty, the next chance I get. It seems like a perfect accompaniment to David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley (OMG I would love if she did a NY Diet). And also maybe David Foster Wallace if you want to get intellectual about it.  What is it about Davids and humorous essays?

But I keep digressing. Here’s the good part. Rakoff writes about the food department at Ikea which is so clean that beautiful that it, and I quote, “ led me to buy a pretty bottle of elderberry syrup which is so off-puttingly floral, it’s like drinking someone’s grandmother.”

Right? Great line. First of all, even though at first glance that seems like a very odd and perhaps morbid thing to say, after you let it absorb you know exactly what he means. Of course what he means is that old ladies wear too much really sweet smelling perfume. And that’s the other cool thing about this line. He’s talking about a taste, equating it with a smell, and describing it as an action. He’s got a lot of your senses engaged, which is what makes reading interesting. And it doesn’t take him a long time to create such a vivid idea; the simile is only three words long. Short and simple, and yet not at all.  And now I will stop talking about it because great writing is often diminished by analysis. As an erstwhile English major I am allowed to say that, even if it mostly discredits my whole college career.  And on second thought perhaps this blog as well. Oh well. Read on.

Ad Agencies: Get in the Game

Last fall I kept a blog for class that examined the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in advertising- both traditional and alternative forms. This is my favorite post from that assignment and it seemed like a good place to start now. Read on.

It’s been said many times before that there must be some connection between the celebrity and the product he’s endorsing. It seems an obvious fit then, for sports stars to endorse sports related products or services. So, what a great idea for Clay Matthews, a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, and Steven Jackson, a running back for the St. Louis Rams, to promote Nike's Vapor Carbon Fly Cleat and Pro Combat Hyperstrong gear in a Dick’s Sporting Goods store, right? The ads do seem to start with a solid concept. The pro athlete approaches a customer with the Nike product in hand, mentions the name of the product and proceeds to act as they would in a football game, implying the consumer can also do this if he buys the item. The idea of a football player exaggerating actual game day moves in a sporting goods store is supposed to be funny and the tagline, “take every advantage” is supposed to bring these moves to life for the everyday athlete.
But to me, these ads, particularly the Clay Matthews version, are not effective. This is because not only is the athlete not showcasing the product at all, either visually or in terms of its characteristics, the sight of a huge man blowing past a family and barging through a wall display of footballs is both gratuitous and off-putting. Here’s the ad:

According to Clay Matthews, the Nike cleats are about “being quick and blowing up plays.” Fine. Cleats that make you fast, that seems right. And if you look for it, you can tell that Matthews is wearing the cleats throughout the ad. But that’s not what’s focused on. What the ad focuses on is the smashing of Dicks’s Sporting Goods displays. That’s not sports, that’s not how the cleats would actually be used, and that’s not even an analogous situation that demonstrates the benefits of breaking up tough situations. And then we hear, “take every advantage.” But that ad has not shown us that wearing Nike cleats actually gives us any advantage. Nothing is accomplished by Clay Matthews running into stuff. The ad seems to think that merely by using a figure that in real life is quick and does blow up plays it can successfully transmit these ideas in an unrelated situation. This is an example of using a celebrity merely for his fame, not for any real purpose. Also, running around like an idiot is just embarrassing for a Pro Bowl athlete.
            The Steven Jackson version ameliorates a few of these problems. Here’s the ad:

In this version, Steven Jackson still doesn’t mention any particular benefit of the Nike shirts (and also pants?), although he does imply that when wearing the gear, he is able to perform his job as a running back more effectively. But, we still don’t know what differentiates Nike Pro Combat Hyperstrong from the many other compression clothing options available. The gear, however, is much more prominently featured, visually, and in a logical way, than the cleats. In the sequence where we intermittently see Jackson dodging actual football players and rolling past other customers waiting in the checkout line, Jackson is not only wearing the clothing, he’s holding it, as one would a football, as well. What also works about this section of the ad is that a clear analogy is made between actual sports and Jackson’s actions in the store. It is still a little strange that he imagines himself dodging football players in a dimly lit, snow filled store, but at least there is a direct association between football and the reason he is rolling over customers in slow motion. More importantly, the ad has made a clear association between his actions and the reason we know who he is in the first place. And, the fact that a man whose job requires him to be physically aggressive is shown delicately pushing past people is funny. Clay Matthews is also required to be physically aggressive, so portraying him that way in an ad isn’t funny, it’s what we expect. Finally, the tagline “take every advantage” makes sense here: because of the Nike Pro Combat Hyperstrong gear Steven Jackson moved from the back of the line to the front..

The moral of the story here is that a sports star holding a sports product does not mean we understand what the product is about. That’s too simple. The connections we draw between a person endorsing a product and the product itself are complex, even if we don’t consciously think about them all when we see an ad. Sure we watch grown men run into each other in pursuit of a stretched out piece of rubber every Sunday (and Thursday and Monday) but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid. Not really.