Commercials

Ok, I know I have vented about radio and TV commercials before and I still believe that they are a direct curse from Satan himself but I have an idea. I'm not usually a fan of the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" motto but I'm pretty sure I could do that job. I mean, how hard could it be to make a commercial? They obviously are making somebody some money because if they weren't they would quit making them and I could watch The Simpsons in peace. But since we can't collect taxes like they used to in Bible days and I have yet to make anything close to my first million doing it legally, I'm thinking of a career change.

I have a couple of hurdles to get over before I can start doing commercials for a living though. First, I'm not very smart. Let's be real honest with each other here. Brain surgeon I ain't. But that in itself is not the real problem. The problem is that not being very smart, I always want to do things that don't work very well. There are lots of illustrations of that but those are stories for a different day. Anyhow, my thinking is that if I were doing commercials I would want to do them completely different. Call me crazy but I think a quality product would sell best if you plainly and without drama laid out the features and the benefits of the product in an honest and succinct way. I would not scream or use guys dressed like cowboys anymore to sell anything ever again. But that obviously wouldn't work or somebody would do it that way already, I'm sure.

This leads to my second hurdle and that is that I have morals. I think that probably disqualifies me from advertising and surely from law or politics but in my commercial-making world honesty would be the best policy. If you can't advertise the absolute truth, here's a thought: don't bring it up. You don't have to lie or even exaggerate about the benefits of a product. Don't say something is the greatest in the world or is recommended by 4 out of 5 doctors if you can't back it up. Be creative enough to honestly tell me why this product or service would be good for me and then shut up. If you can't then don't advertise it. In fact, make a better product and then tell me about it. How about that?

I think one of the easiest commercials to make would be a perfume or cologne commercial. There's no real good way of presenting the benefits of perfume except to say "It smells real good!" So, advertising people just get some model to walk around and you just have to use your imagination that she smells good. Sounds pretty easy to produce that one. The hardest part would be finding a model. Where do you go for perfume models? And if you want to really test your creativity, sell perfume on a radio commercial. Even I could model perfume on the radio! All you basically have to say is, "I smell better than you. Buy my cologne".

So, while my feelings for commercials haven't changed - I still hate them with the white hot passion of a thousand bottles of new and improved Tabasco - I would like to give it a try just for the money. Is that so stupid? I think I could make money and still be honest. Truth in advertising will alway win out. In fact, 60 % of the time...it works every time! Or your money back!!!