I am fed up of ads that are trying to represent an attitude without any justification for it.
Car companies are especially bad at doing this.
They spend millions of dollars trying and make their bland piece of metal look interesting by spouting attitudinal clap-trap that means absolutely nothing.
While I appreciate no one wants to be inauthentic, this sort of bollocks is the embodiment of it.
However I recently saw something that took fake attitude to a whole new level of rubbish. Have a look at this:
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Seriously, who says things like “exhilarating fashion and movement is always with me”?
Actually no, there’s another – more important question – what the hell does it even mean???
To make matters worse, it’s not even a celebrity saying that shit, it’s some invented character – designed to personify the image and attitude of the audience Ricoh are trying to attract.
Some points …
1. Even if a celebrity did say that, it would be bollocks.
2. Given someone made this statement up, it means it’s super, sad bollocks.
3. This tells us more about the client than it does the audience they’re trying to attract.
And don’t even get me started on how confusing it is to have an ad for Ricoh featuring a camera by Pentax. I know they’re the same company, but it looks schizophrenic. No, scrub that, it looks stupid.
Look I know the role of marketing is to ‘market an image’, but if you do it without any element of truth influencing your brand you just end up undermining your value and your potential … because as much as society don’t give a shit about advertising, they give a shit about not looking stupid and this sort of superficial, contrived nonsense won’t fool anybody.
Or at least I hope it won’t.
But maybe I’ve got it wrong.
Maybe they knew exactly what they were doing.
Maybe they realised that was little point trying to position themselves as premium and aspirational when every other brand tries to do the same and instead, chose to target a difference audience segment altogether.
It certainly would explain how they ended up with this car crash of an ad though if that is the case, then I’d suggest they update their endline to be more representative of their strategy.
Ricoh: for the delusional, confused, stupid and gullible.