I end up spending a lot of time each week on the Skytrain and the subway. I don't do it because I enjoy doing it — I do it because I need to get to work. I'm grateful that the BTS and MRT exist. Getting around this city without them takes forever.
I've been riding mass transit in this city for a long time. I even remember riding it when there weren't TV screens on every platform and train, blaring constant advertising at me. Ah, those were the days. It was a simpler time when all you had to worry about was being shoved into the person next to you or having your pocket picked. Good times.
But now every commute involves the constant visual and audio din from speakers and screens. I usually try to drown it out with my headphones, but I have to turn my mp3 player up to nearly ear-bleeding levels just to drown out the ads.
I will say that my mass-transit trips are the only time I really see commercials anymore. I don't watch cable, and broadcast TV is so laughably terrible that I can only stand it for a few minutes. But on the train, I'm a captive audience. And the advertisers know it.
Recently I was reminded how monumentally dumb commercials can be. There's currently an ad campaign for a very well known, red-labeled soft drink. In the ads, celebrities take a drink of said cola and seem utterly astonished by how delicious it is.
The ad is asking consumers (that's you and me) to actually believe that these folks are tasting the No. 1 soft drink in the world for the first time. And that it's delicious!
The merits, taste-wise, of the soft drink aside, I have a really hard time believing that any of the people in that ad are tasting it for the first time. I find it more believable that the guy who eats the fish sandwich featured in a different ad, actually has his head turn into a fish.
More than the noise and visual assault, it's the condescension to the viewer that I dislike the most. If you want to convey the deliciousness and refreshment that your product has to offer, there are better ways of doing it than to have an actor stare in dumbstruck amazement at this astounding thing he's just put into his face hole. Yuk.
But I suppose if some annoying ads are the worst thing that I have to deal with on my commute, I'm actually pretty lucky. Now if only people would stop shoving me and trying to pick my pockets.
Sean Vale
Editor
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