The marketing of fear
SuzannePjam
Posts: 411
The Keychain of Doom
Or be the first on your block to welcome the apocalypse
Mark Morford
Friday, April 27, 2007
I do so love the marketing of fear. It is so very ideologically perfect, so quietly dehumanizing, so brutally American.
Politicians are experts at it. Gun nuts swallow it whole. The Christian right sucks it down and spits it back up. They all wallow in the low, ugly energy of fear as though it were some sort of cheap heroin and they were both the dealer and the junkie.
But as good as these groups are, they can't hold a dread-soaked candle to the king of all fear purveyors: the marketers. Really, there is simply nothing like sinister consumer advertising to make you think -- in simple, strategic, carefully test-marketed ways -- that you are about to die.
Here, then, is this new commercial. It is for a car. It does not matter which car but just know that it's an upscale, well-appointed sedan and it's beige or maybe silver and not all that interesting or overtly sexy. But its main selling point, at least according to this commercial, is the key chain.
See, somewhere inside this nifty car is a carefully calibrated sensor that can detect ... wait for it ... a human heartbeat. When it does, the car will send an urgent signal to your key fob and a red light will flash and a beeper will beep and you will be alerted that, well, there is something inside your car. And it has a beating heart.
Is it a rapist? A monkey? Is it the sad little baby you left there a few hours ago to go shopping at Bloomingdale's?
In this particular commercial, it's definitely option A, the criminal. This is the implication: Someone has (with no signs of forced entry, broken glass or alarm) broken into this female exec's shiny Volvo S80 (OK, now you know) and is now lying in wait in the handsome, leather-trimmed backseat, just out of sight, hoping she doesn't stay too late at the office because he's simply dying to jump out at her and beat her with a sledgehammer and steal her credit card and go shopping at Bloomingdale's.
The message is what matters: Thank God for the Volvo S80. Thank God for creepy key-fob technology that you didn't even know you needed that can detect human heartbeats. Thank God you didn't buy a Saab or a BMW or you'd be totally dead by now.
Perhaps you are thinking: "Wow! A key fob that will alert me to the presence of rapists and terrorists and forgotten toddlers in my handsome Swedish car? This must be the greatest gadget ever invented! This must be the absolute ultimate in awesome key-fob technology!"
You would, of course, be wrong.
The Volvo heartbeat fob is for wimps. If you're really hard core, if you like to fantasize that your life is actually a swell mutation of the movie "Syriana" crossed with Season 2 of "24," why, you need the ultimate key-chain accessory.
No, it's not a gold-plated wine opener you can use to crack open a bottle of '98 Petrus with the 12th wife of Crown Prince Abdullah in your suite at the Dubai Four Seasons. It's not a cute little Leatherman Squirt, with the cool folding scissors with which you can snip a lock of lavender-scented hair from your sultry French mistress. It is not even a Star Wars Stormtrooper mini USB drive you can use to carry around all those classified state secrets.
What you need, Mr. Bond, is the NukAlert 24/7 Radiation Monitor and Alarm.
For a mere 160 bucks, this little key-chain whopper will let out a friendly, but urgent, beep when it detects dangerous levels of radiation nearby. That's right, it's a key-chain accessory that detects nuclear war. Feeling warm? Teeth falling out? Check your key chain. It's the apocalypse! To the bunker, Alice!
The NukAlert likes to think it is serious business (as opposed to, say, something your geeky 10-year-old self desperately wanted to order from the back of a Spider-Man comic circa 1975). The makers say its battery will last 10 years. It can survive a 6-foot drop, plunge into 6 feet of water and works at temperatures as low as 70 below and as high as 120. The cute little NukAlert Web site (nukalert.com) even claims that carrying one is some sort of status symbol among nervous D.C. politicos. Then again, so are high-priced hookers. And bad cocaine. And lousy haircuts. So, you know, caveat emptor.
Of course, if you're a real badass, if you are both savvy and enlightened enough to value your own life as well as the life of the entire human race, you carry both the NukAlert and the Volvo heartbeat key fob.
That way, as you're running toward your Volvo with the intent to hop in and race to save your family from the imminent mushroom cloud, you will know if the terrorists have beaten you to it and are already sitting in your backseat enjoying your premium Volvo sound system and that bottle of Petrus you were saving up. Damn! The terrorists win again!
Or be the first on your block to welcome the apocalypse
Mark Morford
Friday, April 27, 2007
I do so love the marketing of fear. It is so very ideologically perfect, so quietly dehumanizing, so brutally American.
Politicians are experts at it. Gun nuts swallow it whole. The Christian right sucks it down and spits it back up. They all wallow in the low, ugly energy of fear as though it were some sort of cheap heroin and they were both the dealer and the junkie.
But as good as these groups are, they can't hold a dread-soaked candle to the king of all fear purveyors: the marketers. Really, there is simply nothing like sinister consumer advertising to make you think -- in simple, strategic, carefully test-marketed ways -- that you are about to die.
Here, then, is this new commercial. It is for a car. It does not matter which car but just know that it's an upscale, well-appointed sedan and it's beige or maybe silver and not all that interesting or overtly sexy. But its main selling point, at least according to this commercial, is the key chain.
See, somewhere inside this nifty car is a carefully calibrated sensor that can detect ... wait for it ... a human heartbeat. When it does, the car will send an urgent signal to your key fob and a red light will flash and a beeper will beep and you will be alerted that, well, there is something inside your car. And it has a beating heart.
Is it a rapist? A monkey? Is it the sad little baby you left there a few hours ago to go shopping at Bloomingdale's?
In this particular commercial, it's definitely option A, the criminal. This is the implication: Someone has (with no signs of forced entry, broken glass or alarm) broken into this female exec's shiny Volvo S80 (OK, now you know) and is now lying in wait in the handsome, leather-trimmed backseat, just out of sight, hoping she doesn't stay too late at the office because he's simply dying to jump out at her and beat her with a sledgehammer and steal her credit card and go shopping at Bloomingdale's.
The message is what matters: Thank God for the Volvo S80. Thank God for creepy key-fob technology that you didn't even know you needed that can detect human heartbeats. Thank God you didn't buy a Saab or a BMW or you'd be totally dead by now.
Perhaps you are thinking: "Wow! A key fob that will alert me to the presence of rapists and terrorists and forgotten toddlers in my handsome Swedish car? This must be the greatest gadget ever invented! This must be the absolute ultimate in awesome key-fob technology!"
You would, of course, be wrong.
The Volvo heartbeat fob is for wimps. If you're really hard core, if you like to fantasize that your life is actually a swell mutation of the movie "Syriana" crossed with Season 2 of "24," why, you need the ultimate key-chain accessory.
No, it's not a gold-plated wine opener you can use to crack open a bottle of '98 Petrus with the 12th wife of Crown Prince Abdullah in your suite at the Dubai Four Seasons. It's not a cute little Leatherman Squirt, with the cool folding scissors with which you can snip a lock of lavender-scented hair from your sultry French mistress. It is not even a Star Wars Stormtrooper mini USB drive you can use to carry around all those classified state secrets.
What you need, Mr. Bond, is the NukAlert 24/7 Radiation Monitor and Alarm.
For a mere 160 bucks, this little key-chain whopper will let out a friendly, but urgent, beep when it detects dangerous levels of radiation nearby. That's right, it's a key-chain accessory that detects nuclear war. Feeling warm? Teeth falling out? Check your key chain. It's the apocalypse! To the bunker, Alice!
The NukAlert likes to think it is serious business (as opposed to, say, something your geeky 10-year-old self desperately wanted to order from the back of a Spider-Man comic circa 1975). The makers say its battery will last 10 years. It can survive a 6-foot drop, plunge into 6 feet of water and works at temperatures as low as 70 below and as high as 120. The cute little NukAlert Web site (nukalert.com) even claims that carrying one is some sort of status symbol among nervous D.C. politicos. Then again, so are high-priced hookers. And bad cocaine. And lousy haircuts. So, you know, caveat emptor.
Of course, if you're a real badass, if you are both savvy and enlightened enough to value your own life as well as the life of the entire human race, you carry both the NukAlert and the Volvo heartbeat key fob.
That way, as you're running toward your Volvo with the intent to hop in and race to save your family from the imminent mushroom cloud, you will know if the terrorists have beaten you to it and are already sitting in your backseat enjoying your premium Volvo sound system and that bottle of Petrus you were saving up. Damn! The terrorists win again!
"Where there is sacrifice there is someone collecting the sacrificial offerings."-- Ayn Rand
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
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