Who’s Real & Who’s Not In Advertising These Days?

Last night, while watching the Blue Jays beat the Yankees, hopefully on their way to a wild card berth in the American League, I happened to see this retail commercial for Ford.
It was one of those commercials where they have these three cars on display (in a studio) and people walking around them with a real spring in their step. Why? Because they are going to be buying a car at the same price that Ford employees pay.
In this commercial, this couple with their kid is standing there wondering why all these people are skipping around, and rather awkwardly at that, and looking so damn pleased with themselves.
This great looking, but very casually dressed, woman, according to the super a Ford employee, comes up to them and explains that the people are so happy because they are all getting Ford Employee pricing and goes on to explain what that means, like we really didn’t get it when she said Ford Employee Pricing.
So once the family understood what this was all about off they went skipping merrily through the studio display of cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgGAz54T_fY

Now this commercial was as phony as a three dollar bill. But that’s not what bothered me.
What bothered me is that the whole structure of this commercial and a whole lot of other TV and radio commercials I am seeing and hearing lately are set up to try and convince the viewers/listeners that people who are obviously actors, are actually real people.
This is a very disturbing trend in advertising these days, and it’s disturbing because what it indicates, at least to me, is that advertising people have become cynical about the people out there, believing that are that people on the other end of these messages are either just plain dumb or gullible enough to believe that all these people they put in their commercials are just plain folks, when in fact they are, by and large, actors.
There was a time when testimonial advertising involved real people, and their actual comments about things. I know this because I worked on brands that spent a good deal of time and creative energy on making sure that their testimonials were based on what the users of those products actually felt.
There was a good deal of screening that went into this so we could get people who sounded good, were sincere and maybe even had a bit of TVQ. But we never scripted anything for them. We only asked questions.
But, if you look around these days, there seems to be a movement away from that.
In some ways this can hurt the credibility of the brands that are being advertised as a certain percentage of the people seeing these commercials will be able to tell that the ‘real people’ these brands claim to be using are not real at all, and the ‘real experiences’ they claim to be relating are in fact only written by copywriters to sound 'real'.
It’s a sad commentary on today’s advertising world. Fabricating reality never really works in your best interest.
Here’s another one in the same series for trucks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbC1X-Aeovg

Jim Murray is a marketer, communication strategist, writer, art director and blogger. His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, headquartered in St Catharines, Ontario. Bullet Proof is designed to help companies change their thin king for the better, to become more productive, efficient better branded and successful in today’s highly competitive business world. You can find out more about us at: www.bulletproofconsulting.ca

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