Thursday, October 22, 2009

Speaking of Dry Heaves

I know, you probably weren't, but I was. Because yesterday when I pulled up in my mom-mobile to pick up the third of three third graders in the car pool, the Rat Guy (license plate: RATZZZZZ) was descending the front steps of my friend's house, making an early morning trap check and carrying two big plastic bags. Yes, it's Rat Season again here in the Oakland hills (all that rain makes them seek drying quarters, fast.) And if they haven't hit your house yet, it's just because they haven't gotten that far in the rotation yet.

As the dad of the household said to me while loading his son in the car, "My wife won't be out. She's inside, dry-heaving."

So I'm sitting here today working on a new client project - another small, craft-oriented business that just needs an objective eye to shake up their marketing efforts. They're in the classical music business so I am researching ad rates at KDFC and San Francisco Classical Voice, and streaming the lovely classical piano music while I work. It reminds me - there IS a kind of music I can listen to and still be productive, and I swear my shoulders are two inches lower than when I started.

Until an ad played at the :45 minute mark - for toe fungus medicine. Detailed, I mean DETAILED descriptions of why that's a bad thing (like we need to be convinced.) It must have been a five minute spot, or maybe it only felt that way as my bile kept rising. Now my concentration's all shot and all I can picture is the cartoon toe fungus on TV. One takeaway, though, is that we are SO going to do a classier ad than this.

2 comments:

  1. That American thing of medicine and health advertising is HUGE compared to here... toe fungus might be alluded to but never detailed!! Who'd have thought Aussies would be so refined?!

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  2. Oh, it would be hard to sink lower than American pharma marketing. Everyone's favorite is the ad for erectile dysfunction that airs repeatedly during Sunday afternoon football games - while the kiddies are wathing - showing a grey-haired but still studly man throwing a football through the hole in a tire swing. Get it? GET IT? So understated.

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