The fact that you’ve named all your backyard squirrels might not be the only tipoff that quarantine has turned your brain a dull, middling Groundhog Day-like automat, with all the nimbleness and creativity of a doorstop.
But you’re not alone.
TV advertisers seem to be much in the same boat with little to market, other than hey, they’re people, too, with nothing much to do – since no one is buying.
Much like the virus itself, that mental fog has encompassed copywriters and producers since, inevitably, their spots now fall into the psychic zombie sphere of the apprehensive homebound and their inaccessible marketplace, where their customers now live.
Enter this YouTube supercut of current Covid-19 commercials (now with 1,00,000 plus hits) showing that there is a method to advertising during even the worst of economic and health disasters.
Cue somber piano, reference to decades of business but we’re family -- and my favorite head-exploding line, “In these uncertain times,” we will be there for you.
So, newsflash, marketing and advertising can still edge on soulless mediocrity, going the paint-by-numbers route even when this scale of panic and suffering demands much more than a feel-good piano line.
Well, we get the hype and gloss-over from certain huckster politicians, so really, no surprise here.
Like them, in these uncertain times, we probably shouldn’t expect much more -- we’ll have to ponder the 50,000 gone in two months, and the dumpster fire economy all on our own.