Advertising that just doesn't make sense.

I sometimes joke that my career is to manufacture and design trash. Newsprint, by nature, usually has a one day shelf-life. I say it jokingly when jovial, and cry it when drinking tequila; and such is life.

I am proud to say, however, that I still take pride in my work. Tomorrows trash as it may be. And as is the case with every career choice, there is a bottom of the barrel for design and I have been lucky enough not to have reached it (as yet). This barrel bottom that I speak of is, in my opinion, banner and pop up ad design. This un-clicked web trash is so disposable it doesn't even make it to print. I HATE these ads. They are usually horribly designed and more than not, are part of a scam. Lose weight, get a degree, buy real estate ... your bank account will be robbed at a mere click.

What spurred this diatribe on internet advertising is this ad:



Let's critique, shall we?

Life insurance. Already not something I am going to buy from a web ad. That's the kind of thing that I want a piece of paper and a friendly face behind. I won't even go into the typography of the thing, or how the layout is so horrendous that you would have to actually pay me money to make me read the whole thing. In fact, where the words life insurance not larger and a different color, I wouldn't have any idea what the ad was for. Why wouldn't I know? Because the picture MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER!!!! What the hell does a girl with really tightly pulled back hair and bad makeup, kissing a fake frog wearing a plastic crown that doesn't even fit his head have to do with LIFE INSURANCE?

I would claim to be speechless, except I just wrote a paragraph about how ridiculous it is. Why? Because it is ridiculous. And doesn't mean anything. I understand that Burger King does inappropriate commercials where girls are smacking their asses and trying to have sex with Spongebob Square Pants (or something) and that is supposed to sell hamburgers and that is what we call advertising these days but ... this life insurance ad crosses the line of suspended disbelief and verges on, nay, succeeds in; insulting my intelligence.

What the heck was this designer thinking? I understand how hard it is to come up with these ideas over and over again and that metaphors for life insurance are in short supply but come on!

And on top of that, it's fugly.

The end.