I’ll be the first to admit that as a hardened cynical member of the grungiest contingent of Gen X, I’m not one to put much importance on advertisements. Don’t need no one shouting at me to buy their thing, I know what I need to buy, thank you very much. Therefore, unless they make me laugh, I tend to ignore ads, fast forward, skip over, keep walking. Come to think of it, laughter is the one and only emotional impulse worth weaving into whatever you’re selling to a woman of my demographic. You’re welcome marketers.
We hear that the best ads, be they video or print, are designed to imprint a brand on our consciousness by wrapping it up in a story. The lanky model gliding down curved neo-renaissance marble stairs? Why, look, how elegant and worldly you’ll be if you only buy this perfume! The sweaty sports guy kicking ass in some random sport? Why, if you drink the stuff he drinks, you just may kick ass too!
My cynicism ran deep and true. That is, until I started following this star you see up there in this blog’s header. He didn’t need to do any selling as far as I was concerned, but I did slowly realize the fact of life that many a millenial has caught on to decades before I ever did. Folks who want to succeed, particularly in competitive, highly visible fields in the limelight, do need to brand themselves and sell themselves. And shows that said people are on need to do promos to get the buzz going. Since I started writing for this blog, ads that I would’ve once ignored or derided are suddenly requiring second and third looks and lengthy discussions about what it all means. Especially when a certain someone is featured in them. Yes, I know, I know, an ad featuring Damian Lewis is just another hammer hitting another kind of reflex meant to elicit a particular response from a woman of my demographic. But it’s not just *that*, okay? (Doth the lady protest too much? Eh, probably.)
Continue reading “A Taste Here, a Taste There: Showtime Billions S2”
