Corporate dream come true

By Bob Greene

MIDLAND, Texas -- The advertisement is appearing in newspapers and magazines around the country. The key phrase is a question:

"When was the last time 42 million people stood on line for your commercial?"

The advertisement is meant to promote a company that specializes in putting commercials into movie theaters. Not previews, not cartoons -- flat-out commercials, hawking products. You pay seven or eight bucks for the privilege of watching them.

As the company that places these in-theater commercials contends, "Nothing commands the attention of an audience like the movies."

Perhaps. But the argument can be made that 42 million people are not standing in line so that they can view a commercial -- they're standing in line so that they can see a movie. And once they get into the theater -- their wallets lighter -- they have no choice but to sit through whatever commercial messages are put in front of them.

Even to complain mildly about this is futile; our nation has evolved into such an advertisement-driven land that to question the propriety of non-stop advertising messages is to shout into the wind. Clothing manufacturers once had to spend millions of dollars to get their names and logos in front of the public, via traditional advertising; now people willingly -- eagerly -- pay top dollar to purchase shirts and shoes with the names of the manufacturers plastered all over the outside.

The clothing companies should be paying the people to walk around like human billboards; instead, it's the human billboards who are paying. Take my money, sir; let me advertise your company on my shirt.

There has been a shift in the public's attitude toward advertising. Advertising -- once seen as an unapologetic attempt by companies to get their products noticed, a heavily laboring cog in the machine of capitalism -- now has taken on a different, if parallel, function. People appear to feel elevated by being willing bearers of someone else's advertising message; far from feeling diminished by strolling around displaying a corporate logo, many people evidently feel empowered by it. If they've seen that logo on enough commercials, then the logo -- the brand name -- has become a star in its own right. And if they then pay money for the right to wear that logo -- on a shoe, on a shirt -- then the logo's stardom may rub off.

If there was ever a stigma involved in the willing embrace of blatant advertising -- too commercial, too mercenary, too obvious -- that is long gone. At state fairs, corporations bid for the right to have specific days declared officially theirs. It's no longer simply Tuesday of fair week -- it's the day officially sponsored by this hamburger chain or that soft drink. At some fairs, the logos of the sponsoring companies are stamped onto the backs of the hands of the fairgoers as they arrive and pay to get in. Ostensibly it's to allow them back in should they leave the fairgrounds during the day. But what it really is is the ultimate dream of an advertiser -- to have the corporate message imprinted on a potential customer's flesh.

And the person with the logo on his or her skin can't do a thing about it -- just as the person who has spent money to go to a movie can't do a thing about the commercial he or she is forced to sit through. The next big controversy about this may center on public schools -- many of which are thinking about accepting corporate cash in exchange for giving the corporation permission to advertise on school grounds.

Except it may turn out to be not controversial at all. In Colorado, the 88,000-pupil Jefferson County school district announced its intention to sign a $7.3 million, seven-year deal with Pepsi. In exchange for the soft-drink manufacturer's money, the school district would give Pepsi "exclusive marketing and advertising rights" for its products in 140 schools. The same school district announced a similar potential deal with US West. That telephone company would pay $2 million to get its name displayed on a football stadium. A high school football stadium.

Which -- in our new world -- probably will seem much more prestigious and glamorous than a football stadium that merely carries the name of a school. That old kind of stadium would be sort of like a plain white T-shirt. What's the point, if there's no pitch?

Chicago Tribune