It is that time of year again. When the adds on TV all seem to be for
perfume. Presumably this is because in
the summer we can all be outside, with plenty of fresh air to drive away the
fowl stench of our loved ones. But now
that winter is here and outside is less inviting, there is just no getting away
from it. They really stink. And we must buy them perfume. Or choke.
Given that smell is a rather difficult thing to convey via
medium that plays only to our other senses, the add men have to come up with
another way to convince us to buy into their particular stink. They must sell us a concept, a dream, an
aspiration. And it seems that they have
decided what we most aspire to is the ability to be massively pretentious. And possibly live in a black and white
world.
The most offensive of these ads on TV is rip off of the
final scene from the film Notting Hill. Where
Hugh Grant blags his way into Julia Roberts press conference. Quite why this should inspire me to smell like
the weasel faced miscreant in the advert I do not know. And I can’t judge it against the product
itself because I genuinely don’t know what it is advertising. I probably did at one point, as at some point
in the past I must have seen, what is only a few seconds of film, to its
conclusion. But since then I have
scoured it from my mind. These days it
irritates me to such an extent that when it comes on, if I am within reach of
the TV remote I will turn the sound off and look away. If I am not close enough to the remote I look
away and enter a trance like state where I block out certain aspects of my
surroundings. This state I have otherwise
attained through meditation or sitting in the back of a small plane, knowing
that I would soon be leaving its relative safety to head back to earth via the
clear air between. So maybe these
perfume adverts do have a higher purpose after all.
Here’s wishing you a happy perfume season and lets hope
their stench does not choke you before the fresh air of spring sets you free.
Perfume adverts are much like those for cars. You can't give much information about a car in terms of how it handles or comfort, just how it looks and how it sounds. So, much like perfume adverts, car advertising is mostly aspirational rather than informative.
ReplyDeleteA trick I've learnt from Angela's side of the family (which seemingly never occurred to my family) is to always keep the remote near, and use the mute button frequently.