MARKETING THE DREAM
by Daren Foster

***I was watching some commercials and a football game broke out.***

Sitting sorta Stateside (slinging slang owing to some sunny side, singlet-wearing chill-axing), I’m dragged, much against my will, by football fanatic friends in front of the TV for Super Bowl XLIII. In my forever approaching dotage, I have become leery and weary of sports induced pageantry, militaristic pomp and circumstance that reduces the actual game to a mere blip on the screen. But the Boss did rock, I must admit.

But enough of the amateur armchair analysis. What most caught my attention during the game had little to do with any of the on-field action. About ten minutes in, I found myself in a commercial haze. You see, normally trapped behind the Technological Iron Curtain above the 49th parallel for Super Bowl Sunday, we are deprived of the American advertising orgy that has become as integral a part of the proceedings as the game itself. The high-priced ads eventually make their way north in dribs and drabs over the subsequent months, diminishing their dazzling impact in the process.

Allow me an official narrative timeout for a brief explanation.

Way back when, in an effort to foster a native television industry, the Canadian government gave our private networks the right to ‘simulcast’. This enabled the broadcasters to override TV signals coming from the States and insert local commercials, thereby increasing their revenues. Some of this pirated booty was then supposed to be plowed back into producing home-grown fare and voila, a full blown, Canadian television industry would blossom. Nearly 40 years on, the industry remains but a fragile flower, perpetually teetering near extinction while the private broadcasters have grown fat from the government largesse. The greedy bastards cannot die soon enough for my liking and may well do so, thanks to their complete incomprehension of the shifting broadcast landscape.

For you kids reading along out there, what you have just encountered is the perfect example of the word ‘digress’. Something you tend to do a lot if you watch too much TV. An unfortunate but not entirely unwelcome sacrifice, IMO.

For the rest of you who haven’t witnessed a Super Bowl within the confines of the good ol’ US of A or even those with no predilection for the game of football itself, I’m here to tell you that it’s truly something to behold before you die. Even in a year when some of the Big Boys reduced their output, times being what they are, the commercial spots (at least throughout the first half) provided an utter banquet of pure pimping and promotion. So much so that rather than using the one or two or eight minute break to take a pee and refill the nacho plate, one actually remains seated (or splayed, depending on how far into the margarita batch you are) to watch and critique the ads. Once the game restarts, you then stagger off to do the necessary maintenance before the next break in the action occurs.

Oddly enough and despite my unexpected enthusiasm toward being so commercially bombarded, nothing in particular stuck with me. I don’t remember any specific ad except for some guy getting hit in the nuts, which is always a show-stopping crowd pleaser. It was simply an aura of joyful manipulation and relentless product pitching, leading to one incontrovertible fact: if America conducted business as well as it advertises -- you know, wage wars, build automobiles, educate their children, be makers of things, to use the President’s words -- the country would not find itself in its current dire straits.

Which is ironic considering advertising and marketing are simply tools to increase consumer awareness about all those well Made in America widgets. Bullets in the armoury, as it were, to give you a leg up in a fiercely competitive market. We have this great product. People need to know about it. Otherwise, you’re simply putting the cart before the horse. I have this great advertising gimmick. We just need a product to pitch with it.

Or maybe I’ve been particularly Pollyannish about the process all along. Maybe the power and glory of America has always been about its masterful ability to advertise.

Yes, when you have a group of slave owning gentlemen farmers penning and championing a document that proclaims “… that all men are created equal...” it may well be the case that the whole enterprise has been a mirage from the very beginning. It is a country and population built purely on hype and marketing prowess. Believe and it will be so. If you can manufacture a global superpower on that principle, making a fortune selling shitty cars must be a cinch.

The problem with depending solely on marketing with little to back up your claims is that eventually you are exposed as a fraud. The butt-ass naked emperor, the little man behind the curtain and all that. For every American success story, there’s a tarred and feathered snake oil salesman run out of town on a rail. A reality that isn’t real depends entirely on the willing suspension of disbelief and while you can fool some people some of the time, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well.. something, something, yaddie, yaddie, we won’t get fooled again. Once upon a time a responsible consulting organization reported a study by a competent medical specialist and his staff that claimed no ill-effects from smoking Chesterfield cigarettes. And we all know how that turned out.

Marketing is not inherently bad, although to hear Bill Hicks tell it, those who market are. Bearing witness to an American style Super Bowl, I’d willingly admit that as a form of entertainment, marketing and advertising can produce highly engaging and enjoyable moments of diversion. Sometimes much more engaging and enjoyable than the actual content you originally sat down to watch. The trouble begins when that’s all there is. Shilling for shilling’s sake. It’s an empty process devoid of any meaning outside of making a buck. But maybe that’s as American as Grandma’s Apple Pie™©®, steroids in baseball and Super Bowl Sunday.