Unique Whips

Today I didn’t have a chance to watch The Simpsons but I did catch this show called Unique Whips. This show is all about the custom car shop called Unique Autosports, they will take care of customizing your whip also known as your car. They customize cars for their regular clients as well as a long list of celebrity customers. In the shop they do a number of things including all kinds of electronics, dashboards, carpet, seats, window tints, rims, tires, and boxes for the subwoofers and amplifiers for you sound systeme. I have watched this show before but never really noticed all the advertising that goes on during the show. I never really paid attention to how many banners and signs that they have around their shop so that in the background of the show you see all the brands they use on the show to customize the cars. Besides all the signs there is a lot of name dropping in the show, the whole time they are talking about the brands of the components that they use in the cars. Every time they show a finished car they say we hooked this car up with the Motorola Bluetooth and an ipod port for their music. But it’s not only those they talk about the Pirelli tires, and the Strut Grills. I always complained about how many commercials that there are but I never really realized how many advertisements that are on during the show. No don’t get me wrong this isn’t a bad show, this happens in many shows it is just hard to notice.

Dr.Who?

Now everyone knows that advertisers use many ways to get you to buy their product sometimes they use sneaky weasel words but other times they use another way, they use doctor’s and actual consumers. How many times have you seen a commercial where they used an actual consumer to support their claim. If you watch daytime television there are many weight loss commercials, in these commercials they show before and after pictures to show you that their pills work. Now to me those pictures don’t look that convincing so the advertisers give you something else to prove their product, they interview somebody who supposedly used the product and had a successful out come. Now if your still not satisfied with the before and after pictures as well as the consumer testimonial, they now interview doctors. These doctors are here to tell you that the product that is being advertised is safe and effective, now since there is an actual doctor many people will be convinced and actually go and buy the product because they now feel safe with it. The only problem is that the doctors that they are interviewing are not doctors in that particular field, they may be asking a dentist what they think about a particular diet pill. Now what does a dentist know about the effects of the diet pill on your body, the only thing he would check was to see if it would rot your teeth. Now you know that everything you see may seem to be true but on a technicality it may not be, so read all the labels for everything you buy very carefully.

Hurricane Neddy

I can easily say that The Simpsons is my favorite show of all time, so I recently bought a Simpsons DVD. On this DVD there is the episode with the hurricane, in the episode we find out some things about Ned Flanders you would have never thought of before. In case you don’t watch the show Ned Flanders is the neighbor to Homer Simpson and he is the most uptight and plain person you can find on the show, but he is also the most polite person in the city. Ned is also most known for his faith, he is the person that you will see in church come rain of shine. Well in this episode a hurricane comes ripping through the town destroying Ned’s house but leaving Homer’s untouched. Ned then later finds out that his store the Leftorium is currently being looted. Since he is such a nice guy all the towns people decide to rebuild his hous, and they actually built it, it looked almost the same it was before. So they get Ned and show him his new home, after the tour he shuts the door and the whole house fall to pieces. After all this drama Ned is furious and goes off on all the townspeople. Later in the episode we find out that Ned was a very bad kid, and they tried a procedure that would stop his rage. This procedure worked great but there was on side effect it worked too good and Ned was no longer able to express his anger. That procedure turned out to be the reason why he exploded, so he was told to express his anger from now on. Now, this episode was hilarious but I can’t get over the irony that the nicest, happiest, and most religious guy in the town was the one hit with all the hardships and exploded. The part that puts the icing on the top is that the most stupid person in the town Homer Simpson didn’t suffer any hardships through the hurricane; his house was left untouched. Anyway if you don’t watch The Simpsons I suggest you do at least once because it is very entertaining.

Weasel Words

Have you ever went to a drug store to buy a product, but you can’t decide between two brands. Then you see one has something written on it that will make you choose that one over the competitors. Well this same scenario happened to me yesterday, I went to Rite Aid to buy some after shave for my face because I have sensitive skin. So I was trying to decide between Nivea after shave and Gillette after shave, so I picked up the boxes and to see which one was better. After I read the boxes they both were equally good and almost the same price, but the Gillette box said 30% more free! So, I bought the Gillette brand. The next morning after I shaved I went to use the after shave and guess what happened, at first the after shave was coming out then all I heard was the sound of air being squeezed out of the tube. Then I learned truly what weasel words were, they are tricky words that advertisers use in their slogans and on their products in order use to get your attention and ultimately to buy their product. Now here is the tricky part, the tube said 33% more free and indeed I received 33% more free but it turned out to be air not after shave lotion. Now that I know what weasel words are I can try to watch for them and try not to get burned again, but as you and I know the advertising companies are so good at it we often to see it and pay the price.