Thursday, December 04, 2003

Give 'Em the Bird

from Wired.com-

You know that picture of President Bush serving a big, fat turkey to the troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day? It was a fake. Not the photo, but the bird. Turns out the succulent-looking gobbler was merely an attractive centerpiece—provided by a subsidiary of Halliburton, no less—concocted to make Bush look like the consummate host. According to the Washington Post, the soldiers were served slices from a much more modest bird, well out of camera range.

The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner
In Iraq Picture, Bush Is Holding the Centerpiece

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A33

President Bush’s Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.

Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush’s stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.

The scene, which lasted just a few seconds, was not visible to a reporter who was there but was recorded by a pool photographer and described by officials yesterday in response to questions raised in Washington.

Bush’s standing rose in a poll conducted immediately after the trip. Administration officials said the presidential stop provided a morale boost that troops in Iraq are still talking about, and helped reassure Iraqis about U.S. intentions.

Nevertheless, the foray has opened new credibility questions for a White House that has dealt with issues as small as who placed the “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the aircraft carrier Bush used to proclaim the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and as major as assertions about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of unconventional weapons and his ability to threaten the United States.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33090-2003Dec3?language=printer

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Ad Nauseum

It’s that time of the year again, when every huckster with something to sell is trying to peddle it anyway they can. For someone who used to work in advertising, I’ve developed a healthy contempt for most sales pitches. It would be nice again to not see an ad on everything my eyes happen to rest on, whether while driving or looking around the web or watching TV. Billboards, signage, logos, infomercials, web banners, blimps. No, scratch that last one. Blimps are kind of cool…

It’s interesting to see how ads have slowly crept onto the surface of many objects, into sponsored events and even the interfaces for cable TV. The last one was one that particularly annoyed me. When the cable company introduced the ads on the bar that appears across the bottom of the screen when you switch channels, they built in a 3 second delay to ensure that you look at the ad. What this means is that to advance across all the 200 or so channels on our cable system now takes several minutes, instead of less than a minute. It’s as if someone took your computer away at work and replaced it with one from 5 or 6 years ago that ran at one eighth the speed of your current one. What value have you received for your time? Nada. Just an ad you try to not look at anyway.

But that’s not what really bothers me about advertising. It’s not just the creeping ubiquity or insidiousness of it all.

It’s the results.

Ad agencies have spent decades learning how the human mind ticks, what you respond to and how to manipulate various feelings, guilts and desires. They’ve gotten very effective at it as evidenced by the consumption rate in the U.S. We swim in a sea of advertising in this country, almost everything we look at has an ad. It’s the same in Japan and Europe. And what’s the result? We buy tons of stuff we are told we just have to get but don’t really need, consuming vast amounts of raw materials and energy while generating megatons of pollution. Then we need to work harder to pay for all this stuff.

Now you know why I don’t work in advertising anymore…

- Bob Woods