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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1999-12-08, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8,1999. PAGE 5. Advertising: The not-quite exact science Let us consider the phenomenon of advertising. Some folks call it the bane of communication in the 20th century, but it's been around a lot longer than that. Elizabethan town criers hollering Oyez! Oyez! in Hyde Park? Advertising. Lady Godiva riding bareback (and bare everything else) through the streets of Coventry? More advertising. When you think about it, advertising has been ever with us. Marshall MacLuhan called it “the cave art of the 20th century”. Like all art, some of it is good and some of it is awful. I for instance, have decided I will never purchase so much as a footstool from U- NIT-ED FURNITURE WARE-HOUSE! because their television ads are so annoying. At the other extreme, there is the classic TV ad for Volkswagen. You remember the one? It opened on a blizzard scene while a voice asked if we ever wondered how a snowplow driver gets to work. Then they show a humble VW Beetle in the middle of a field of snow. We hear it start, we see its headlights come on, we watch it crawl steadily, dependably across our television screen. End of ad. That ad showed no actors, no celestial choirs, no endless highways, no special-effects bells and whistles - it was so simple it was even shot in black and white! Ad people still speak reverentially of “the snowplow ad” nearly 40 years after it first International Scene By Raymond Canon Behind the scenes If there had not been so much election rhetoric this past spring in Ontario, you might have been able to hear the screams of anguish from Ontario companies, and there are many, which export to the state of Michigan. Anybody, including Canadians, doing business in that state was told that a two per cent tax would be payable on all products sold in the state. This would affect all companies from the giant Ford corporation to the considerably smaller Watford Roof Truss Co. which does 50 per cent of its business in the U.S. and is the largest millworking company of its kind in Ontario. When you consider that the volume of trade between Ontario and Michigan is in the neighbourhood of $50 billion, such a tax would impose a cost of a cool $1 billion. Consternation in the ranks! In no time at ail Premier Mike Harris was on the phone to his counterpart in Michigan, Governor John Engler. Fortunately, the two get along well and know each other. They are also both very supportive of anything that will create jobs and conversely against anything that will take jobs away. Our federal government soon got into the act aired. At the other end of the spectrum there is the “Just For Feet” television commercial which didn’t even survive one year. Advertising people call that one the “Ad from Hell”. It all started with a prosperous, but not terribly well-known shoe company called Just For Feet, a company that sells running shoes. In an effort to make themselves famous they blew their advertising budget, hired the best agency they could find and signed up for the most expensive advertising slot available. The ad agency was Saatchi and Saatchi. They assigned their most creative people to the Just For Feet account. They came up with an ad and showed it to the Just For Feet president. He hated it, but the ad guys told him to relax. It would work like a dream. It was the best thing the agency had ever done. You stick with shoes, they told him. We’ll take care of the advertising. Chances are you didn’t see the Just For Feet ad - it didn’t run long - but then it didn’t have to. It was scheduled to run during one of the most coveted - and expensive - time slots there is - the third quarter of Super Bowl 99, when something like 127 million people around the world would be glued to their TV sets. In a spot like that, the advertising agency has as much riding on a successful ad as the client does. Everybody wants it to be Just Perfect. Like - you know - that snowplow VW thing. What went on the air was an ad that showed a squad of grim-looking white commandos riding through the desert in a military Humvee. They are tracking the footprints of a barefoot black runner. One of the bad guys drives ahead and offers the runner a cup of water laced with a knockout drug. The runner gulps it down, swoons and falls to the sand. While he’s lying there, the bad guys gather and, aided by Governor Engler’s ability to stickhandle around his state’s business laws so that he could come up with something that would be approved by the Michigan government, a compromise was reached, although the details still have to be worked out. Consternation was replaced by a certain amount of joy! Well, at least for most people. The large trucking companies, led by Bruce Smith of Simcoe and Verspeeten of Tiilsonburg, are still excluded from the agreement and are, needless to say, very unhappy. However, efforts are now underway to get trucking included and hopefully that will be accomplished in the near future. This brings up an interesting point. Under normal conditions such things as foreign trade are the mandate of the federal government and the man who should have been moving and shaking is the federal trade minister. However, Premier Harris decided to take the bull by the horns. Since he already knew Engler personally, he thought a person-to- person call would get the ball rolling that much more quickly. The federal government was left joining the discussions after they had already got started. Fifty billion dollars yearly is a lot of loot, not to mention jobs and hence the direct approach. Don’t think that this action on the part of the Ontario premier will go unnoticed by the other round, force a pair of running shoes on his feet, and disappear. We see the runner come to, look at his Nike- shod feet, start screaming and shouting “No! No!” In the last shot, we see him running hysterically across the sand trying to shake the shoes off his feet. And this ad runs during the Super Bowl where more than a hundred million people can see it. As a writer for the magazine Advertising Age put it: “Have these people lost their minds?” Instead of making the world feel warm and fuzzy about running shoes, the ad made people go ballistic. The New York Times called it “appallingly insensitive”. The Des Moines Register suggested Just For Feet should change its name to Just For Racists. Other critics called the company neo-colonialist, condescending - even drug pushers. What was supposed to be the greatest moment for Just For Feet became instead its greatest nightmare. Their reputation was shot and so was their budget - the company had shelled out $3 million U.S. to hire the agency; $1.7 million to purchase the time slot and another $2 million on newspaper ads urging readers not to miss the great Just For Feet commercial in the third quarter of the Super Bowl. The Ad from Hell had cost Just For Feet nearly $7 million - not counting the lost customers. And that Volkswagen ad I mentioned earlier? It cost Volkswagen exactly $3,000 - cheap even back in 1963 when it was made. George Bernard Shaw once said, “It’s just as unpleasant to get more than you bargained for as it is to get less.” I’m sure the folks at Just For Feet know exactly what he meant. premiers in the country. Lucien Bouchard likes to think of himself as leader of a country that is all but independent and he would not let a little thing like political protocol stop him from appealing to Americans on trade matters over the head of Ottawa. Premiers already get together with their American counterparts in the states bordering on Canada and there is little to stop the talks being stepped up a notch should the occasion arise, as it did with the tax in Michigan. Where is all this going to leave the federal trade minister? While we watch future events in this realm of trade, it might be as good a time as any to remind Mr. Harris, the other premiers and the prime minister that there is no time like the present to knock down the trade barriers between the provinces in this country. Strange as it may seem, it is frequently easier to trade with the United States than it is with other provinces, a deplorable state in a country that likes to take pride in its ability to compromise. A Final Thought People are where they are because that’s exactly where they want to be. - Earl Nightingale Peeking Past the Panes By Janice Becker Rationalize this Rationalization. That is how major corporations have explained the consolidation of operations throughout the 1990s as they try to improve the bottom line while seldom looking at the impact on workers. Now it has come down to consolidating student bodies. Having an elementary school with a population of less than 360 is considered inefficient by Toronto funding standards. As seems to be the theme of the Harris government, bigger is always better. The most recent announcement of schools to be considered for closure by the Avon Maitland District School Board has once again included Walton Public School, a facility which has an official full-time enrollment of just 66 students though it has an actual body count of more than 80 (junior kindergarten students are considered half­ time). As the parent of a Grade 2 student at Walton, I have come to the realization that Walton will eventually close, if not this year, then probably next. Walton is far more than just a school, it is a family where older students help look after kindergarten children. Parents are more than welcome to visit at any time and many do on a regular basis. It is a place where every child is known by name, by all the staff and fellow students. I was always impressed during my son’s first years that as he was leaving school there would be a chorus of good-byes from all ages, not just classmates. And now, not only does he face the prospect of going to a different building (that could be dealt with), but he may be separated from every other child in his class of 10 if the board decides to realign school boundaries. With the suggestion that Walton pupils could go to either Grey Central, Brussels and/or Seaforth, there is the very real possibility my son could be the only one from his class sent to Brussels as he is the only one on the Morris Twp. side. When talking with colleagues and friends, I am frequently told, “Children adapt”. But my question is, “Why should he be forced to?” It was not this family’s decision to move to another school area. I never wanted my child to go through that upheaval. It may be easy for some to adjust and make new friends, but it is not so in all cases. It is time the provincial government and the board stopped looking at dollar signs and consider the little lives being impacted. Will they be there when a child refuses to ride the bus because he has no friends? Will they soothe fears when the child struggles? Of course not. It is up to all parents, not just those on this year’s potential closure list, to protect the learning environments of our children. Their comfort and security should not come down to money. Though I have come to accept the impending closure, I can only hope our elected trustees will take the time to listen to and consider alternatives to splitting schools. Thd board should be fighting against the province’s stranglehold on education funding rather than shutting out upset community members. It is time they all thought about the children.