Marketing 101: Promises, Profits & How Home Depot is IN BED WITH Cialis

The truth shall set you free. Pretty sure all of us have heard that phrase at one point or another, even though this seems to ignore the fundamental reality that it is human nature to avoid truth at all cost.

My last post, Welcome to the Matrix–You Work for Free & There IS NO Payday threw down some hard truth that many of us are participating in an illusion. It was a rather meaty, deep post so today we are going to laugh a bit because we need to.

It’s Friday the 13th.

So I’m gonna be KILLIN’ IT! 😀

I am going to—in this post—demonstrate how Viagra is encouraging men to become pirates and Home Depot is in collusion with Cialis.

Completely true story I just made up.

Anyway…

In the last post I used the movie The Matrix as a metaphor for the reality of what is happening to creatives and we will chat on that more later.

The thing is, ALL of us are in some way powering The Matrix not even realizing it. Creatives are making the content to sell the goods & services which generate money. Money and The Matrix (media) are linked and one cannot survive without the other.

But, it is ALL powered on telling us we are not enough…without X.

Remember in the movie the computer started out trying to make the illusion world perfect for the human Duracells—like a perfect nirvana-wrapped-in-heaven–but the humans wouldn’t buy it?

They asked too many questions and wouldn’t comply with that illusion because it was “too good to be true.” The humans/batteries all had this face…

So the computer had to go make this illusion of life all hard and add in some suckage so humans would be good and obedient batteries.

Yes this has a point….

Welcome to Marketing 101

The whole media-consumer-machine is The Matrix. It only works if the batteries are unhappy and unsatisfied.

See almost all goods and services send out a lot of conflicting messages and most of the time we (humans) don’t even notice…because we are all confused.

Marketers understood this. It’s why they use this confusion and our dysfunctional desire for approval to sell us stuff.

I don’t know about y’all, but my family expertly threw out what I call “boomerang compliments.”

Kristen you are so incredibly smart…which is a blessing because you aren’t beautiful like your cousins.

Nana, WTH?

This meal you cooked was amazing!  Just maybe next time you could use more salt?

Mom, seriously?

Your house is beautifully decorated! The bright colors made it where I didn’t even notice all the cat fur.

Nana. Just…stop. Please.

Anyway, if you grew up like I did, knocked half unconscious with boomerang compliments, then you might have turned to books, shows, magazines or mentors/gurus to learn to think in “healthy” ways.

Perhaps you even went on-line in search of some kind of “non-toxic” affirmation that you were not a total disappointment.

And OMG! *angels sing* There it is!

The Media LOVES US for WHO WE ARE

We found it! The site for women and it says we are enough. No, more than enough. Perfect the way we are. Heck-to-the-yeah! We knew it the whole time *does cabbage patch*.

But then that website or magazine that just told us we were more than enough as we already are….

Wait…what?

It has a gazillion articles of how we can improve and be even BETTER. And these articles, they are sandwiched between ads promising products and services to help us no longer suck.

Wait. You said I was perfect, but I need fixing? So I AM damaged. Oh, okay I see. See, I thought I was supposed to love myself as I am, imperfections and all….

But, my bad. You’re right. Truth hurts. I do have chubby thighs, wrinkles and so much laundry I’m fairly sure I lost one of my kids. Haven’t heard from the smallest one today. I will buy and do all of this and THEN…then I can love me for ME. Good. We have a plan. 

So glad you are NOT like my critical family.

 

Cool. Good. I am so happy I found this site because before, I thought I was just supposed to be okay being me and I was wrong. But NOW I have help because your site has 10 Ways to Have an Immaculate House and Trim My Thighs at the same time using household cleaning tools to get fit with…

Swiffercize…

Directions:

Hold in your core as you stand in front of the refrigerator.

Now, bend and dust, and bend and thrust. Squat and swoosh, and firm your tush! Floor is clean and now you’re lean!

Dust those high places ladies and say goodbye to flabby arms!

Really this is genius. I can have a clean house like in Good Housekeeping a firm body like a movie star AND save money because I don’t have to pay a gym and all while improving my time-management skills.

#Genius

****Oh and there is that anti-depressant ad for when none of this crap actually works.

And after all of this, I finally realize Google is proof there is life after death and Nana is now in a better place. Nana has reached a higher level of being in The Matrix.

The mean old bat is now Google and she is STILL fixing me.

The Matrix is Powered by Imperfection

Self-acceptance is something many of us struggle with and the fight gets harder day by day as our culture bombards us with ideas and products and services founded on us being “less than” while promising some kind of “perfection.” 

They’re selling magic creams to us older gals telling us this Oil of Delay will make us look like a model half our age who’s been Photoshopped when she really didn’t need to be Photoshopped because she isn’t old in the first place!

She’s a kid and has like maybe a zit…not even a wrinkle or if she does, it’s a wrinkle that’s small and more like a…a pre-wrinkle.

We are so used to being lied to, we don’t even question it because most of it if we took a few minutes to apply some critical thinking, The Matrix would all unravel.

Never Question The Matrix

Critical thinking is like holy water on The Matrix. Commercials, ads, programs, and hype sizzles and screams and loses power if we just stop…and think.

I’ll prove it.

Men are told that if they buy a blue pill it will dramatically enhance their sexual vitality so they can go sailing…alone. WTH?

Sailing by themselves and that doesn’t even make any damn sense.

Guys, seriously. Someone call Viagra. Like if you’re buying a pill for physical intimacy with what we are assuming is another human (as in more than one person involved in this activity) then the whole going sailing alone just…

I don’t get it. I mean are you a pirate? Does Viagra make you a Viking, and the dude in the commercial is sailing off alone because the plan is to raid an island of unsuspecting sunbathers?

Y’all do know that is illegal. Viagara, I’m assuming you consulted your legal department on this.

Okay. I will stop. Just please to make me feel better, put another living person of consenting age on the boat in the commercial and I promise I will stop over thinking this…..

No.

Seriously. Just one more. I can’t leave this one be.

Cialis

If your drug works so great, why aren’t the TWO people in the same bathtub? I confess. I am no spring chicken, but I’m not so old I can’t recall the 1990s and…

*brain heating up*

How does this pill work? Like does it make the male libido so powerful that it…teleports? And us gals are supposed to be Schroedinger’s “Cat” in that the footsie-time is both there in OUR tub but not…at the same time?

Because now all I want to do is to e-mail Neil deGrasse Tyson on this, because your drug is proof there is a multiverse where older people are scoring by apparently folding space.

And is this why we only ever see these folks in your commercials from the back…because their eyes have turned blue like the Fremen?

#HeWhoControlsTheSpiceControlsTheSexyTime #TheSpiceMustFlow …into these bathtubs because water sure isn’t.

Okay Cialis, I mean no disrespect. I get y’all mean well.

I admit, many of us older couples are cranky and tired (mainly of finding Barbie shoes and Legos in the bed) and you’re just trying to help.

We appreciate the effort, but the message just gets us all confused because unlike young people, older people THINK. We in fact think too much…which is a big part of the lack-of-nookie problem.

This pill is so us older people can be super hot and frisky like when we were twenty. The PILL will make us fixate on love and kissing…instead of fixating on how to kill out the crabgrass in the lawn or that the tile in the bathroom needs to be repaired.

In two separate bathtubs…on a hill.

Which—just being honest here—your metaphor only confuses us and lead our minds everywhere BUT a bedroom. In fact, it makes anyone married or over the age of 35 to forget about nookie altogether.

Instead, a lot of the guys start contemplating how the hell someone got two tubs on a hill…with working plumbing.

So the men are all:

My wife isn’t gonna want tubs in the backyard now, right? I can’t lay pipe like that. Hell, I’m not twenty-two. I’ll throw out my back with all that bending and digging. And the yard has crabgrass. Crabgrass spreads, man. You gotta stop it when you see it.

Simultaneously many of us women are all pissed off because we see the look on our husband’s face when he watches that dumb@$$ Cialis commercial.

We KNOW that look.

We saw it right before we banned him from watching home improvement shows after he tore out our pantry shelves then never put them back.

We know our husband is trying to figure out how to install bathtubs in the yard because he thinks that is what we want. No, we want our pantry put back together because we misplaced all our spice.

That, and he still has to get rid of all the crabgrass…’cause it spreads. Neighbors don’t want that spreading to them, too.

So the women watch the Cialis commercial and are all:

Oh no he isn’t. If he thinks I’m gonna go outside and maybe up a hill to clean all that? Nossiree. What about the one we have that’s old and needs fixing? He isn’t trained to lay pipe like that. He doesn’t need to! He already bought the caulk, the jumbo size for more than one job! And the CAULK is still in the drawer. Unused. Untouched. Probably turned from white to blue now and won’t look right.

Wasted caulk. 

No. Not today. NOT today.

Home Depot has to be behind all this, because we are now thinking of needing more caulk.

Defeats the whole purpose. Cialis? Seriously fire that twenty-something marketing person and hire an over forty romance author.

***You could also hire the over 40 erotica authors…but only HBO could air the commercials.

Where was I? Sorry, I got hung up on that. But all this proves my point about The Matrix. We are all plugged in and buying an illusion without question. We are just accepting that we are not enough and the X, Y or Z would remedy that.

It won’t. Happiness is what these folks all sell, but happiness is highly overrated. Want to know why? Because happiness relies on happenstance. Our surroundings, what we have or don’t have dictate how we feel.

This is why they sell LIES. Lies sell STUFF. It just sells a lot of CAULK.

Truth can, however, bring contentment, and maybe even JOY if we let it. Love and friendship and family and kids in all its messy imperfection can actually be enough if we let it be. We can actually be at peace with wrinkles because a line-free face is just weird…and expensive.

Then you just get more wrinkles because you have to pay the medical spa bills.

Embrace the lines of laughter and pain. You earned them. When we learn to be at peace with the messy house because it means we have a home. When we learn to love our cellulite-laden legs because it means we have LEGS. When we embrace the Legos that just shredded our feet for the brief window of childhood that will soon be gone….then, THEN the Matrix loses its hold.

Happy Friday! Enjoy! You and hubby go play pirate and slave girl, and maybe even let him wear the eyepatch this time 😀 .

What are your thoughts? What are some of the ads that make you go W…T…H? Like why are there NO women over 50 in an ad for anything but adult diapers, arthritis meds? So no women over 50 wear lipgloss? Or buy cars?

And guys CAN actually dust. I have witnessed this. And it is SEXY. Men all mopping and asking for some-some…

Why can’t a hot older DUDE be in the Endust commercial? Men dusting is a turn on! Ask any woman.

In fact. Rescue the Viagra guy from his boat where he’s all alone (tempted to be a pirate which is illegal) and give him a dusting rag? Oh yeah sell some Cialis AND some Endust.

THAT is thinking people.

What about you? What are your thoughts?

I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU! And I am NOT above BRIBERY!

What do you WIN? For the month of OCTOBER, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

I hope you take the red pill, and I am here to guide you.

Social media is and should be super fun and that while you might need solid training, you DO NOT need a team of professionals paid a never ending stream of cash to “manage your brand”. You also DO NOT meed MEGAs to “launch you.”

I can train you what to do and how it all works. How you can create something where MEGAs come to YOU…

I have two upcoming classes Social Media FREEDOM–Harnessing Passion & Creativity to Cultivate Fans & Harnessing Our Writing POWER–The Blog

I highly recommend you sign up for one of our upcoming classes listed below, especially to properly prep for Nano.

Fail to plan, plan to fail 😉 .

****Note, those who subscribe by email, the visual gallery doesn’t show, so please click through and sign up! We look forward to seeing you and serving you in class! Helping you be the best you can so your work can stand apart 😀 .

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  1. Kristen, you made me laugh. My late husband used to mute the TV when certain commercials came on because they were so stupid. Neither one of us ever figured out what the two bathtubs meant. I’m old enough to know better and still fall for some of the “guaranteed” health products.

    1. I’m also a big fan of muting commercials. Many set their own volume higher than the show itself, as a way of further making it harder to ignore them.

    • clarie o'sullivan on October 13, 2017 at 2:43 pm
    • Reply

    Amen, Kristen!

    All the Viagra sellers of how to be a perfect/better/more perfect writer hawk their ‘drugs’ like crack near the corner store. And… we buy into it. WOW. At first, such a high… And it’s at half price HOW can I resist? Then…

    We are hooked to that lie. Addicted. Wandering from corner to corner shelling out more and more money for every expert’s (Pimps of Drug-addicting Euphoria Until We realize, we need MORE!) opinion. Giving our books away for free. For what, ‘ever’?

    phttp

  2. OMG, yes, this.

    I was both laughing out loud and nodding along with the whole thing.

    Two things have made me very happy. First, I got rid of my subscriptions to ALL magazines. Every one of them. They never made me feel better, never helped, and most of the time made me feel worse. There’s some study out there about how bad women feel after reading beauty mags. I feel the same way about parenting magazines and the rest, too.

    The second was getting rid of cable. No more commercials. No way to come into my house and make me want and need things I don’t. Yes, I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. If I really want a show, I can purchase it or stream it. But after 8 years of being away from cable, you really notice the constant bombardment of ads when at a friend’s home. So, I haven’t actually seen the Cialis or Viagra commercials, though your description of those was a riot.

    I do believe advertisers have done everything they can to make us feel unloved so they can sell us what we “need” to be worthy of love. We will never be pretty enough, smart enough, funny enough…never enough. It’s all a lie, but it’s a lie that makes billions and billions of dollars a year. The diet industry alone is worth of $60 billion annually.

    And yes, us older folks need to learn to turn off the brain. Granted, the lack of Barbie shoes and legos in the bed would help, too!

    I WANT to see erotica authors’ commercials! I’d subscribe to HBO on Amazon for those!

  3. This definitely made me laugh. And it is funny (pun intended), I was just discussing commercials with someone over lunch. I was reflecting how many commercials don’t actually tell you anything about the product, they just show beautiful people living happy lives, and the product, whether it’s jeans or coke, is in the scene, claiming the implied credit.
    I forget where I first heard it, but there’s a concept that many commercials are not selling the actual product; they’re selling joy.
    In some ways I feel like many advertisements are trying to make addicts of their customers. They strive to convince the customer that they’re unhappy, and that this product will somehow “fix” everything, but as soon as you buy the product you realize that’s not true, and advertisements begin the cycle again.

  4. Pharmaceutical ads in general are bizarre. They often include a list of side effects much worse than what they claim to help. There’s one for psoriasis that may cause cancer. Get rid of that pesky rash, trade it for cancer? Does that sound like a good idea to anyone?
    Then there are the anti-depressants that “may increase suicidal thoughts in some patients.” Or the asthma medication that “may increase the risk of asthma-related death.” My bad, I thought anti-depressants were supposed to stop people from feeling suicidal, and I had this crazy idea asthma medication was supposed to REDUCE the risk of asthma-related death.
    I also wrote an entire blog post about one of my favorite radio ads: https://sharablesarcasm.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/sarcasm-scams-part-2-the-robot-serves-frozen-yogurt-and-money-come-and-get-it/

  5. One mantra of ad designers is that no matter what you are selling include a puppy or a cat or a baby in the scene and American suckers will buy anything. Why would 3 different creatures that shit all over the house trigger some subconscious dynamic to buy a product ?

  6. My husband usually does the ironing. Total turn on for me. And when he’s cooking (not grilling outside but standing at the stove), I am always hugging him from behind and thinking about cooking things up in the bedroom. Oh, and washing dishes? Yessir, you look SO sexy with hands buried in dishwater.
    I try to avoid watching too much TV–period–but the advertisements are always ridiculous. Sure some of them make me laugh. Like the insurance one with the guy who is the teenage girl and gets in an accident texting? Hysterical.
    Thanks for the laugh. I was a little scared your Friday the 13th post might be horror related. Whew! This is so much better.

  7. Oh Kristen – This post made me laugh until my sides hurt! At the same time, I got the point. Being someone who just turned 69, I have taken on the possibility of pro-aging rather than anti-aging. I’m aging, that’s the truth, so why not enjoy it and use products that support my aging. Anyway, loved, loved this post.

  8. And then there are the bloodless ads for ‘feminine hygiene’ products. I don’t know about you, but I’d be much more on board if they featured, say, a bloodbath of a battle scene. Show me that those things are capable of dealing with something more than a few drops of blue ink. Why blue?? As Kaz Cooke points out, the only person who ever had a blue period was Picasso.

  9. Oil of Delay . . . [snerk; giggle] . . . I’ve been laughing about that one all day. Along with those stupid bathtubs–I never thought about plumbing when I saw those, though. To me, it always more like: “Honey, let’s go take a bath in those rusty old horse troughs in the pasture while we wait for your boner pill to kick in!” Sexy!

    I didn’t realize how many erectile dysfunction ads were on TV until I started watching TV daily with my elderly father, who would cackle with laughter when they got to the disclaimer about erections lasting longer than four hours and say, “Now there’s your marketing, right there!”

    • Erin on October 13, 2017 at 7:48 pm
    • Reply

    Kristen, you so often leave me laughing. Everything in this post is so true. Loved it.

  10. I love this post, Kristen. So funny. This is my favorite part, though: “Embrace the lines of laughter and pain. You earned them. When we learn to be at peace with the messy house because it means we have a home. When we learn to love our cellulite-laden legs because it means we have LEGS. When we embrace the Legos that just shredded our feet for the brief window of childhood that will soon be gone….then, THEN the Matrix loses its hold.”

    So true about the brief window of childhood. Yes, plenty of of headless Barbies and Legos abounded at our house back in the day, but the pieces from the Lite Brite toy must have been sneaking Viagra or Cialis because no matter how many I’d throw away, twice as many took their place. 🙂

    • Suzanne Lucero on October 14, 2017 at 8:17 am
    • Reply

    Kristin, you’ve done it again, given us truth. Why IS that man sailing alone? It’s all about how a product is perceived. Sailing is freedom, and by extension, doing what you want. So, if you want to be able to have a satisfying sexual encounter again, TAKE THE BLUE PILL.

    This is psychology at its most subversive. Ads aren’t selling what they say they’re selling. They aren’t selling a product, they’re selling a feeling they say you’ll have if you use the product. And it’s not just ANY feeling, it’s a GOOD feeling, a feeling you WANT, whether that’s happiness or love or contentment. BUT WHAT IF YOU TAKE THE RED PILL?

    Then you can laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Thanks for the pill, Kristen.

    (Did I get the pill colors right? I’ve actually only see about 20 minutes of the first Matrix movie, and that was many years ago, and my sons are still asleep this morning so I can’t ask them. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.?)

  11. Thank you, Kristen. That was very … thought provoking.
    I am tired of men being such idiots in commercials [sigh] it’s just too true to life. I mean, cleaning a fish or changing the babies diaper on the food prep counter? I’m just going to prep your sandwich here [guys always want sandwiches] and let you suffer the consequences. I checked and your insurance is in effect and paid up, and since it’s in the home, our home owners policy will cover the expenses, leaving your life insurance for … other things.

  12. Yeah I never understood the two bathtubs with the people holding hands either…. thanks for the reinforcement.

  13. Loved this. The commercial that makes me nuts is Senokot (laxative). The guy finds it in woman’s purse and asks what it is and sort of mispronounces it. The woman has to explain to him what it’s for and that she sometimes uses it. And he acts semi-shocked that her bodily functions don’t run like clockwork, she isn’t perfect and sometimes needs such a thing. It’s so un-sexy and he’s such an idiot I want to scream every time I see it.

  14. There’s a commercial that pops up on Pandora that gets my eyes rolling every time. It’s some chick lamenting that when she cooks ingredients get everywhere then she whines “Why is there flour on the dog?” This is supposed to be selling some meal kit or something, but since I’m not that idiotic in the kitchen I’ll never touch the stuff.

    Excellent article, as usual! The Oil of Delay had me laughing out loud. 🙂

  1. […] via Marketing 101: Promises, Profits & How Home Depot is IN BED WITH Cialis — Kristen Lamb […]

  2. […] feel like it (Sorry not sorry–I had to go there). When the moment is right (um, I have been reading too much of Kristen’s Cialis blog post), a good sex scene is just what the characters and the plot […]

  3. […] over to Kristen’s blog to read the entire post if you’d like, and be sure to scroll to the bottom to see what […]

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