Advertising

It's funny about advertising - here in the US, most advertising seems to be

• cars, and how sexy/powerful they make you
• prescription medicines that you should badger your doctor into prescribing
• and cleaning products that cause women to have orgasms

In the UK, it seemed to be much more

• Supermarkets, and how shopping at OUR one will show your superior social status
• OTC medicines, usually to fix things wrong with your arse
• and cleaning products to eradicate all those nasty nasty gerrrmmmmsssss!!!

(I'd include a NZ comparison, but it's too long since I've seen kiwitv, and anyway our ads are pretty much dictated by the US/UK/Aussie markets).

I find it amusing, the different national obsessions (and particularly funny that the English are so obsessed with germs, when their approach to cleanliness is so casual much of the time). The different approaches to what presumably works to sell products is also interesting: the American approach is -much- more hardnosed and direct, and less about social pressures and (by and large) less about conformism, than the English approach.

Which is surprising, as America is far far more conformist than England ever was. I guess that is down to how they perceive themselves, as rugged and independant & all that pseudo-frontier nonsense, but it still astonishes me how little liberty there is in the 'land of the free', and how little that is perceived.

It's hard to put into definite terms, but so many of the simple things you'd take for granted in NZ are just, well, not here or not simple. I'd try to put in some concrete examples, but I've just had 3 more P1 tickets land on my desk, so any ponderous pontification will have to wait for tomorrow.