The other day I received a letter from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the company that owns Camel cigarettes. It says:
Hey good-looking,
Hopefully, you’re one of the millions who got a nice fat check from the government. And hopefully you had some fun with it. But chances are more of it went into your gas tank than that new whatever you’ve been wanting but couldn’t afford.
More relief is here. And this time it’s only good for one thing – a little break on your favorite style of Camels.
It ain’t a flat screen…. But maybe you could hang a stuffed marlin or something on the wall instead. Just a thought.
Enjoy!
Camel
What a way to sell relief in times of a recession! But R.J. Reynolds is not the only company in this kind of marketing.
Denny’s restaurants had their recent television commercials advertising their Weekday Express Slam, saying “It’s one thing to bail out Wall Street. But who’s gonna bail you out?” Denny’s is going to help you ‘carry the burden of the price of breakfast’.
Brooks Brothers clothing company revived an old ad jingle saying, “it pays to buy at Brooks Brothers,” because the most economical clothes “are those that are made to last.” Given today’s context, such an ad tells the viewer that the longevity of clothes, like an investment, is sound because it is economical.
Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising company based in San Fransisco, generated slogans such as “Your 401(k). Now down to $4K.” Who knows what they were trying to sell with that one?
The recession-inspired slogans reminds me of the recent Wal-Mart commercials – “Save money. Live better.” Although Wal-Mart didn’t talk of recession, between the two kinds, we see that the target market is for the middle to lower classes of society who finds themselves in a tighter budget as a result of today’s economic recession. The idea is to sell them something while acknowledging that money is tight.
And similar to Orwell’s ideas of doublethink, these two ideas are contradictory. But it seems to be such a true statement – save money, and live better, right? But how can you save money by shopping? The bridge between the two is necessity and credit cards.
