Demographic Nightmare

I hate commercials. I hate them for all the reasons any decent, corporation detesting person hates them. But I have a special reason why I hate them. They have no ability to be relevant to me on any level. I am a moving target, and their attempts to hit me are so far off the mark as to be laughable.

There are two examples of this that I can give. One is the marketing during sporting events. There are a lot of sports fans, and the ads played during football and baseball are expensive and well researched, attempting to sell beer or vacations or other nonsense. I am impervious because I am one of the apparently few people who watch sports and neither drink nor play video games. I have no interest, and in fact I am irritated by ads for video games and alcohol. I change the channel or mute them, and sometimes avoid watching them altogether. Marketing people assume that if you watch football you also drink to excess and eat horrible snack foods and drive thru Taco Time. I do none of these things, and never will. Stop talking to me!

The other thing I enjoy watching is science fiction. This of course makes the marketing people who pigeonhole sports fans crazy, and that's fun. But the late night science fiction commercials are hawking video games, computer stuff, and sexy chat lines. There are also often disgusting junk food ads. No thank you. Please move along.

I'd love to see an ad marketed to me. It'd make heads explode. I want to hand some ad exec a form, with "vegan, sports fan, non-drinker, husband and father, socially liberal but radical politically, spiritual, hates arty and pretentious" and try and see them make an ad. It'd almost have to be a blank white screen, but then that'd be arty and pretentious.

I seriously don't think they could do it. Unless they knew my secret trump card, that despite wearing a plain t-shirt and dickies every day, I secretly long to shop for Brioni suits. And even then, how do you get the suit in a baseball stadium? Checkmate, Madison Avenue!