Friday, January 31, 2003
I not sure that I got the memo, or maybe I just missed the press conference, but could somebody please tell me when South Station was renamed ING Direct Train Depot?
If you have been through South Station in the last week, and according to the MBTA web site approximately 115,000 of you do each day, you would have to been more blind then local boy Ben Affleck’s Daredevil character to not notice the infusion of orange oozing and dangling from every corner of the building. Orange, that big bright perfect combination of red and yellow with its marvelous paradox of being both a color and a fruit has been reinvented by your friendly neighborhood global financial service company in the form of, ING Direct advertisements, dozens of them.
These ads hang from everywhere; you literally can’t get away from them. There are flags, signs, banners, billboards and even big ad pasted to the floor for the eye-contact impaired. ING has not only taken over every single existing ad space in South Station, they have put-up enough money that they’ve created ads in places I didn’t even think possible, and I’ve seen condom ads in urinals.
The ads themselves are just stupid, citing obscure references a fictional Joe putting banking his money with ING and becoming a better Joe. From my count there are at least three dozen separate ING banners hanging in the station and with only about five different variations, we’re not talking Burma Shave brilliance here. No, just pure, in your face, look at all the ads we can buy so bank your money with us chest-thumping. The whole experience just feels dirty, like some sort of forced marketing enema.
I’m not sure who to be more disgusted with, ING for shelling out what had to have been millions to take over South Station or the MBTA for whoring itself out in the name of the almighty dollar? I guess I have to side with the MBTA on this one, after all, they seem to be losing money hand over fist and they seemingly haven’t had a train run on schedule since the Regan Administration. You don’t turn down the life raft when you’re drowning. No, I place my blame squarely on the execs at ING.
What’s funny, in an ironical sense, is that they’ve decided to infest their investment ideology when the economy is the worst it’s been n a decade. Their underlying message is fine and I have no doubt that ING provides customers with a better interest return on their money. What gets me is the pure gluttony and corporate flag-waving the ads represent. Given the state of the economy, what kind of message is being sent when companies spend millions of dollars on advertising?
Advertising has just gotten ridiculously out of control in this country. Its everywhere and companies waste more money on establishing a “brand” than they do cultivating a culture that is not only good for the corporate drone stuck fluorescent sunbathing in a corral, but also good for the world itself. People are thing of the past. How people you can get you message in front of the way of today. I’m sure ad agencies are working a on way to get advertisements directly into our brains.
I don’t mean to use ING as a scapegoat, I just can’t stand for anymore for companies flexing their proverbial corporate greed by polluting my life with their advertising BS. Nothing seems sacred anymore; we are subjected to advertising everywhere we turn. And ING has taken it to the extreme. Then again, perhaps I'm looking at this completely wrong. Maybe the next time a company is looking to invest in a multi-million dollar ad blitz, I should give a them a call…I’ll tattoo their logo on my ass for a cool mill.
If you have been through South Station in the last week, and according to the MBTA web site approximately 115,000 of you do each day, you would have to been more blind then local boy Ben Affleck’s Daredevil character to not notice the infusion of orange oozing and dangling from every corner of the building. Orange, that big bright perfect combination of red and yellow with its marvelous paradox of being both a color and a fruit has been reinvented by your friendly neighborhood global financial service company in the form of, ING Direct advertisements, dozens of them.
These ads hang from everywhere; you literally can’t get away from them. There are flags, signs, banners, billboards and even big ad pasted to the floor for the eye-contact impaired. ING has not only taken over every single existing ad space in South Station, they have put-up enough money that they’ve created ads in places I didn’t even think possible, and I’ve seen condom ads in urinals.
The ads themselves are just stupid, citing obscure references a fictional Joe putting banking his money with ING and becoming a better Joe. From my count there are at least three dozen separate ING banners hanging in the station and with only about five different variations, we’re not talking Burma Shave brilliance here. No, just pure, in your face, look at all the ads we can buy so bank your money with us chest-thumping. The whole experience just feels dirty, like some sort of forced marketing enema.
I’m not sure who to be more disgusted with, ING for shelling out what had to have been millions to take over South Station or the MBTA for whoring itself out in the name of the almighty dollar? I guess I have to side with the MBTA on this one, after all, they seem to be losing money hand over fist and they seemingly haven’t had a train run on schedule since the Regan Administration. You don’t turn down the life raft when you’re drowning. No, I place my blame squarely on the execs at ING.
What’s funny, in an ironical sense, is that they’ve decided to infest their investment ideology when the economy is the worst it’s been n a decade. Their underlying message is fine and I have no doubt that ING provides customers with a better interest return on their money. What gets me is the pure gluttony and corporate flag-waving the ads represent. Given the state of the economy, what kind of message is being sent when companies spend millions of dollars on advertising?
Advertising has just gotten ridiculously out of control in this country. Its everywhere and companies waste more money on establishing a “brand” than they do cultivating a culture that is not only good for the corporate drone stuck fluorescent sunbathing in a corral, but also good for the world itself. People are thing of the past. How people you can get you message in front of the way of today. I’m sure ad agencies are working a on way to get advertisements directly into our brains.
I don’t mean to use ING as a scapegoat, I just can’t stand for anymore for companies flexing their proverbial corporate greed by polluting my life with their advertising BS. Nothing seems sacred anymore; we are subjected to advertising everywhere we turn. And ING has taken it to the extreme. Then again, perhaps I'm looking at this completely wrong. Maybe the next time a company is looking to invest in a multi-million dollar ad blitz, I should give a them a call…I’ll tattoo their logo on my ass for a cool mill.
