Hyper Happy Hair Flip
The very first of the Vista ads are arriving. Download squad says it’s boring. You can’t buy Vista yet, so don’t expect too much hype right now.
But I don’t know how anyone can say that is boring. It doesn’t have a storyline or theme, but it’s meant to embed emotional responses in your subconscious — and what can be boring about feeling hyper happy?
You notice *everyone* in the ad is smiling, and it’s not just normal smiles. These are Lil’ Rob in the background singing “feel good expressions” smiles. Then we have bubbles “popping” expansively and bright primary colors to anchor the emotion. Then at the end, you even get to see a woman doing the “happy giggle” cha-cha, and another woman doing the asian hair flip. The asian hair flip is tried and true in Asia, and increasingly a feature of American commercials. Of course, I have no idea why someone would do a hair flip when pressing a remote control for their TV (with Media Center Extender). People only do hairflips when someone is watching, or when they are thinking/dreaming about someone watching.
I think it could have been tied together much better, though. The Pepsi “starry eyed surprise” ad is a standard. The bubbles are lighter; not overwhelming, but you still get the NLP “pop”. And the scanning from happy conversation to happy conversation uses a bit of blur/smooth effects, so it’s more like real-world shifting of attention. The scene shifting in the Vista ad is too abrupt and artificial. And the Pepsi ad is a subtler with colors, using environmental brightness instead of just sheer tint and studio lighting.
I want the next Vista ad to replay the Starsky and Hutch Disco fight scene, or the Zoolander model pose-off.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
I am bothered by advertisements full of blissful happy meterosexual people. I was just looking at the MSN Messenger website and I thought to myself how phony and insincere the actors in the pictures appeared. They seem totally plastic, compliant, and dishonest.
Some months ago, I basically stopped watching commercial TV and I pretty much stopped listening to commercial radio. Today I experience very few advertisements, which makes me hypersensitive to their surreal content.
Many advertisements seem designed to make people unhappy. Nobody can measure up to the blissful consumption shown on TV, but they feel like they have a right to it, and as a result, few people can be content. People must be unhappy about their weight, teeth color, friends, money, wrinkles, relationships, vacations, hair color, car, etc. Purchasing goods and services is the only way to quash anxiety.
So, now when I encounter an advertisement, I think about George Washington, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Techumseh, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other great men. I think about human dignity. I think about human potential. Then, I think about the behavior that is being promoted on the TV.
It has all come to this?
December 8th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Yeah, just watch as we get better and better at automating manipulation of people\’s \”low grade sensualism\” cravings on an individualized and aggregate basis. The machines can do a better job than we can of calculating the exact balance of anxiety, sex, sugar, and whatever else necessary to keep people pulling the levers.
I like this site: http://www.adbusters.org/home/
June 21st, 2007 at 10:51 am
Apparently there is a vlog dedicated to the hyper happy hair flip, which started a couple of months before this post and thusly cannot have been inspired by me: http://www.happyslip.com