Ad insults, injuries, from D'Angelo's

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Regular visitors will know that I think that write off the cost of advertising their crap on their taxes is absurd, and that all marketers are indeed liars, as Seth Godin coined it.

But it doesn’t serve my time constraints to point out the misinformation in every ad, so I only do it when the marketing tack is particularly egregious. And that brings me a current D’Angelo’s ad that flitted across my consciousness while I was in the car this morning.

What seeped through first was the voice artist’s urging to overcome one’s addiction to bland sandwiches, which is doubly dumb. As a practical matter, who gets “addicted” to stuff they don’t really like? The whole idea is that addicts indulge in too much of a good thing! Mostly, though, that’s just an editor’s complaint.

What’s far worse is the marketers’ repeated trivializing of addiction, a condition that brings misery on those who have it and and on those they live with. If you wouldn’t say “Serta mattresses, you’ll sleep so well you’ll feel like you’ve been in a coma!” then don’t trifle with addiction either, please.

I’ve covered this ad sin before, and I might have just rolled my eyes and rolled on if not for the tagline, “think with your stomach.”

No, please don’t! Thinking with our stomachs is how we’ve arrived in a globesity pandemic. How ‘bout we think, period, and not live controlled by creature comforts?

Funny thing is, I used to eat at D’Angelo’s, back when flour was part of my food plan, and the food I recall is fresh and relatively unprocessed. Too bad that in their ads, they serve bullshit.


Author and wellness innovator Michael Prager helps smart companies
make investments in employee wellbeing that pay off in corporate success.
Video | Services | Clients