I’M A GREAT FAN OF Consumer Cellular (a/k/a CC).
All our telephones – including our cordless network – are on the CC network.
HOWEVER, CC’s commercials are “something else.”
THERE ARE (at least) two CC commercials that bother me.
Remember when we had to go to the library?
The most rebarbative1 is the one where a smiling CC customer looks into the camera and says: “Remember when we had to go to the library?”
I want to jump into the tv set and yell: “Do you know what you are missing by NOT going to the library?”
I know it’s just a commercial, but as a regular at my Local Lending Library (L3), I DO know some of the things the character is missing by using a cell phone to download e-books (from the library !) or buying e-books from an online retailer (e-books that later may be resold to one of several online e-book buyers).
In addition to books –“e,” hard cover, soft cover (paperback) in multiple languages – my library also loans DVDs (movies) and CDs (music). It also has a meeting room and children’s programs – try and find an “e-baby sitter” to read to a bunch of youngsters! – and during school vacations, meals for kids who might otherwise go hungry.
My library also offers – gratis; free, too – computers with connection to the Internet. Need to print something? That, too, is available, albeit for a small fee.
If the CC customer is downloading e-books from any source other than the local library, the customer is wasting his/her tax dollars as most public libraries are largely funded by taxpayers.
Finally, how easily and quickly can the CC customer find a book (or DVD or CD) he/she had not considered? I go to the library and I work my way down the shelves, picking out titles I think I might like. My library carefully marks almost all books with a stick-on dot to ID the book’s genre. (Blue is for mysteries.)
What about books for which there are no “e” editions?
The CC customer in the advertisement may appreciate avoiding a trip to the L3, but to my Edward Bear mind, the Customer is missing a lot.
Why buy a whole pie?
There is a CC commercial that asks: “Why buy a whole pie when you only want a piece?”
The answer is simple: “So I’ll have some another time.” Has the commercial writer (and CC ad reviewer) never heard of refrigerators and “burpable” containers or wraps, foil and cling types?
Every so often I will bake a cake. OK, the mix comes out of a box; all I do is add eggs, water, and apple sauce1, mix and bake. My cakes are nice and moist, but I am NOT going to devour a 9-by-13 inch cake in one sitting. (I probably could, but I don’t). Instead, I take a two servings and put one into the ice box (yes, I remember real “ice boxes” and the ice man who delivered the ice blocks) and eat half – the rest I wrap tightly and stick into the freezer, saving it for later dates.
To me, buying a whole pie (or cake) for $10 and dividing it into 8 pieces (cost per slice=$1.25) makes more sense than buying 8 single slices at $2.00 per slice (total $16) at the local diner.
One commercial that is “OK”
CC has one commercial with which I “sort of” agree. That’s the one touting CC’s Customer Service. My experience with CC Customer Service convinces me that it is far better than average. It took several calls and emails to get a ZTE device working, but in the end, an on-the-ball tech figured out the problem (a SIM that needed to be reprogrammed).
The only thing about this commercial that gives me pause is making the male actor appear as if he needed his wife to bail him out of whatever predicament he found himself. Maybe I’m just thin skinned.
Mind the “small stuff”
I once took a commercial photography course – back in the days of film.
The instructor told us a story about an almost price winning advertisement photo. The photo showed a glass of wine with the wine bottle showing the label. Great shot. Great lighting, Everything great EXCEPT . . .
The wine bottle was closed, making it obvious (to the judges at least) that the wine in the glass was NOT from the bottle of the advertised wine. Oops.
The image above is not the cited photo.
CC would do well to “mind the small stuff” before approving an advertisement.
As an enterprise risk management practitioner, I learned to consider all possibilities, including – in the case of CC’s library and pie advertisements, how they could be interpreted.
Reader’s Digest had a competition for an advertisement that could not be interpreted in any way other than what the Digest intended.
The ad read: “Give me a man who reads,” suggesting this was the type person a business needs to engage (or perhaps a woman needs to engage).
In any event, a girl allegedly managed to squelch the Digest’s best laid plan. Her take on the ad: “Send me a man. Who reads?”
Sources
1. Rebarbative: http://tinyurl.com/ybcefq6j
2. According to the back of a Duncan Hines’ box, for a lower fat recipe, use 1/3 cup unsweetened apple sauce in lieu of 1/3 cup vegetable oil. This scrivener is convinced the apple sauce cake is more moist and tastes at least as good at cakes made using oil.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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