Lots of perfectly good sons have been ruined for me because they were used in commercials.

Sexualizing things unnecessarily.

Wine has done just fine on its own for thousands of years. Suddenly, cynical marketing people in the wine industry have decided they need to reach “millenials,” AKA people my age.

It’s hilarious and sad watching a bunch of old farts in suits trying to reach my generation, especially when it’s combined with marketing to women. I think they see us as like this or this. When that happens, you get wine marketing like this or this. (From the skinny girl website: This new girl’s got a little sparkle in her step! Skinnygirl™ Prosecco is far from your typical sparkling wine, ladies! She’s a bubbly mix of light and crisp, of sass and class.)

You also get wine brands like this or this. When a wine is a brand, it usually means someone came up with a marketing idea first, and then they looked around the market for grapes that would fit the desired price and flavor cheap and bland.

All the stuff that makes wine special is lost. There’s no personality or sense that it actually came from a specific place. All that information is dumbed down to make it as simple to understand as possible, so what we’re left with is, “ooh! wine with a pretty flower on it!”

It also comes with vaguely classy-sounding wine descriptions, like “nuances of luscious red forest berries with notes of vanilla and mocha, and elegance on the finish.” What that means in regular English is that it’s a rich red wine where they started with very ripe grapes and added a lot of oak flavor (the vanilla). In other words, something that tastes like every other rich red wine. “Elegance on the finish” means literally nothing. Wine writing is full of infuriatingly meaningless gobbledygook..

As a 20-something woman who drinks a shitload of cheap wine, I’m theoretically right in that demographic. I think it’s the most patronizing garbage ever.

^ I agree with Haleth, as the 20-something woman who buys cheap wine based entirely on whether I think the label would make the bottle a nice candleholder. and whether it’s the kind of wine I like.

Also, medicine.

Can we go back to the place where doctors were in charge of figuring out which drugs we need, and not GlaxoSmithKline’s advertising executives?

I haven’t been there, but I was told there’s a huge Coca-Cola advertisement near the famous pyramids.

The music industry. Once upon a time, bands and singers got famous by writing songs, performing gigs and recording albums, for years and years. Now they’re all marketed through “talent” shows for instant fame and its all rubbish.

Childhood, kids are conditioned to grow up/act older from an extremely early age & it sickens me, empty headed parents are not blameless in the act either.

Politics: it’s all about image and soundbites.
Medicine: Your doctor knows what medicine you need and the drug manufacturer doesn’t.
Children’s toys: Makes children perpetually dissatisfied and bankrupts the parents.
Frugality: What’s wrong with just buying what you need?

Cars: cars are like throwing money on the street when you buy a new one, they depreciate 20% as you drive off the lot. Yet, my husband, and many other people, are totally sucked in by all the advertising. To give him a little credit even without advertising he would still be reading articles about the cars and seeing them at dealerships and on the road, but the advertising is part of the process. You should see what the luxury cars send you in the mails to build brand loyality.

A few of you mentioned medication, and when they first started advertising I was very in favor of it, because doctors don’t always suggest medicine that can help you or alternatives to what you are taking. We have had jellies here who had no idea there was a shingles vaccine and they get reocurring shingles. Their doctor never told them. Jellies here who had no idea Pertussis immunity can wane, their doctor never told them. Most of the population didn’t seem to know the connection between HPV and cancer, a pharma company had to want to sell a vaccine for the average person to know it. It doesn’t matter if they never get the vaccine, it is still health information people should know in my opinion and doctors weren’t telling patients (I do have one friend who was told, but everyone else had no idea they caught their dysplasia or cancer from their boyfriend) nor was there any major movement to educate us about it from public health, because our government still has to worry about puritanical values, especially if it has to do with women’s sex organs. I had a girlfriend who had a very bad toe nail infection, their doctor had never suggested taking the medicine approved for it when topical remedies did not work. A lot of women I know are not feeling better on their thyroid medicine, their doctor never told them they have other options.

Even though I mention all these things, now with the internet and people can easily find information on the internet, I am on the fence about drug companies advertising, because it costs so much money to do it. For sure I would rather see them cut some budget that goes towards wooing doctors, and even for the perks they give their sales reps.

The supplements I use are produced by a company that forbids traditional marketing and very strictly regulates advertising. It’s critical to them that the product sells on it’s merit alone.

Soichiro Honda had very strict mandates regarding the advertising of his products. These rules have all but been forgotten since his death in 1989.

Marketing only makes me aware the product exists. I make evaluations for myself. Quality is without exception self evident.

A great advertisement may take away our freedom to choose objectively. When we constantly are subjected to several images and symbols we tend to seek them out in the marketplace no matter the cost or the products reliability.

@JimTurner:

No, I’m still entirely free to come to my own conclusions regarding a product or service.

I feel the children of marketing people should have food on their plates. Their work just doesn’t influence me.

@SecondHandStoke Good for you. Well done but some folks get caught up in Brand Names and are willing to pay top dollar for nothing more than a few extra whistles and a shiny exterior.

By the way Cambell’s Soup is Mmm Good! I learned that at age five.

@flutherother What’s wrong with just buying what you need?

Only if Madison Ave. says you need it!