And Now a Word From Our Sponsors

At the end of Chapter 17-A, I made a joke about that post being brought to you by Smitwitifs, makers of fine calendars. I wish there really were a way to make a little extra change by promoting free enterprise on personal blogs without being assigned random ads over which we have no control.

Chapter 19 should be posted this weekend. In the meantime, allow me to share this brilliant AT&T ad. It's both interesting and indirectly connected to our on-going "Unsettled" story in that, during the time of these chapters, my dad worked for Bell Telephone (which had sprung from a merger between Western Electric and AT&T).

I've always had a fascination with television advertising. Back in the '90s, when my schedule included a journalism class, I deliberately included an advertising unit (so students would never forget the inherent link between journalism and advertising). As ads go, this AT&T spot is a brilliant use of "subtle reinforcement" (which is similar but not quite the same thing as subliminal advertising. If you have never studied the use of subliminal messages in advertising, here is a must see video, and here are some interesting links.) Because the subtle reinforcement in the ad below is so easily pointed out, I don't think it qualifies as subliminal.

When Cingular Wireless merged with AT&T, they continued the "raising the bar" theme with this "more bars" campaign. See how often you notice this stair-step image depicted in objects in each frame of their "Sweet Pea" 30-second spot. I thought it was obvious but my wife and kids had watched the ad many times and never noticed so, hey, maybe it's not so obvious. The answers are below the clip. (Don't peek.)

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The reward of creating such interesting ads is that they get free air time when people take interest in them. I do not use AT&T wireless, and yet here we are talking about their great ad. Here are the "bars" I saw:

First are the palm trees behind the business man’s house; then come the sky-scrapers in the background as he crosses the bridge and opens his briefcase; then there are blue pens in the pocket of the briefcase lid; then there are the stacked papers at a newsstand; then the most subtle of the subte is the rows of windows in the building to the right of the Empire State building (I didn't see that one until three days after this post); then there are five loaves of French bread in the bag during the line “Look, Daddy, sent us a picture.” Then there are five “stair-step” sky-scrapers again; then there are five stair-step images behind the picture of the monkey in the phone itself (that’s a quick image); then there are monkey bars and swing frames along the back of the playground when the little girl sees the second picture. Then there are five vases in the far back window of the inside of the home just before they look at the five palm trees that were at the beginning of the commercial (now in picture form on the computer screen). There are at least ten pictorial representations of the “more bars” logo BEFORE the actual logo appears in orange at the end of the commercial. It’s a brilliant ad with a great song, a family-friendly theme, and subliminal reinforcement throughout the 30 second clip. Watch it again and see if you see all eleven. There may be more!.