According to what I learned in my business classes in college, the purpose of advertising is to help a company market a product to customers, whether repeat or potential. Some ads are designed to make a lasting impression to improve brand awareness, reminding the customer of their historic shopping preferences. Other ads are intended to simply increase sales. The question is, what is the purpose of the new advertising campaign for Orbit chewing gum? The William Wrigley, Jr. company has dominated the chewing gum business for more than 100 years. Their most popular U.S. products include Altoids breath mints, Skittles and Starburst candies, Lifesavers, as well as Juicy Fruit, DoubleMint, Spearmint, and Big Red gums. Orbit gum is yet another Wrigley brand of gum, one with a very interesting history. During World War II, every pack of Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, and other well known Wrigley brands manufactured were exported to U.S. troops fighting overseas. The brand was discontinued in 1946, after the war had ended and the other brands returned to the American market. In 1976, Orbit was revived as a product, introduced as a sugar-free gum sold in a few European countries. In 2001, the brand was brought back to American markets with the "Dirty Mouth" ad campaign. The first commercials featured a blonde spokeswoman and typically suggested that the reason a person needed to chew Orbit gum was to clean their mouth after they had used bad language. They were pretty silly ads, but mostly harmless. The one starring Snoop Dogg was actually pretty funny, … [Read more...]
Questioning Darwin
This month HBO is airing a program that it promotes as a documentary, called Questioning Darwin. Somewhat predictably, the program paints the picture that Ken Ham and his museum for Young Earth Creationism should be considered the only viable and true alternative philosophy to Darwinism, completely ignoring brilliant thinkers such as John Lennox, Francis Collins, Connor Cunningham, Stephen C. Meyer and Frank Turek, as well as competing ideas such as Intelligent Design and Old Earth Creationism. The documentary dredges up the old, tired creationism versus evolution debate once more, reinforcing many of the known, misleading stereotypes and repeating the same mistaken assumptions that have pretty much been hashed to death already. The narrator begins by claiming that Christians who insist the Bible must be accepted as the literal Word of God are creationists who consider Darwin the antichrist. This was news to me. Based on my limited knowledge mostly gleaned from biographies of his personal life, I was sort of under the impression that Darwin was sort of a spoiled, petulant rich guy who married his cousin and never really had to work for a living. Curiously, the documentary described creationism as a growing branch of Christianity, as if "Creationist" was comparable to Baptist, Lutheran, and Catholic. On the whole, the documentary depicted creationists as stubborn, ignorant and silly deniers of science, while the scientists were portrayed as calm, soft-spoken, rational people. There simply wasn't an option offered that didn't fit those two somewhat … [Read more...]
Out of touch
As a general rule I try to avoid celebrity bashing, mostly because I don't want to sound jealous. Fortunately, after reading Gwyneth Paltrow's outrageous, whining remarks complaining that "it's much harder for [Paltrow]" than a working mother, I happened to read another article that made me realize there wasn't much left to say. Ms. Paltrow explained: I think it's different when you have an office job, because it's routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you're shooting a movie, they're like, 'We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,' and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it's not like being on set. Oh, boohoo. Cry me a river, Ms. Paltrow. Two weeks spent playing make-believe in Wisconsin constitutes a serious hardship in your mind? Suffice it to say that no one is forcing Gwyneth to earn millions of dollars for a few weeks of "hard" work pretending to be a real person. But don't just take my word for it. Check out the hilarious open letter working mom Mackenzie Dawson penned in response to Ms. Paltrow, recently published in the New York Post. Ms. Dawson hit the proverbial nail on the head right off the bat when she began, "Thank God I don’t make millions filming one movie per year” is what I say to myself pretty much every morning as I wait on a windy Metro-North platform, about to begin my 45-minute commute into the city. Sarcasm practically dripped from Ms. … [Read more...]
The creationism versus evolution debate
[Hat tip to my good friend Hiro for sending me the link to the Beliefnet article that inspired me to write this post.] Dr. Steve McSwain looks like a nice guy with a friendly smile, if the picture I procured from his website serves as any indication. Professor of communications at the University of Kentucky, Dr. McSwain is promoted as a former Baptist preacher, a spiritual teacher and motivational speaker with "respect [for] all spiritual traditions" at his website. That courtesy has apparently not been extended to certain members of his own religion, in particular Ken Hamm and those Christians who advocate Young Earth Creationism, often referred to as YEC. To be fair, I'm not particularly keen on Mr. Hamm's apparent position that YEC beliefs are mandatory to be considered a "true" Christian. But Dr. McSwain doesn't even pretend to hide his scorn and disdain for these creationists. He writes of "religious quackery" taught in Sunday School by "misinformed Christian zealots" blithering about like "a bunch of intellectually-bankrupt nitwits." Dr. McSwain is so embarrassed by the very idea of creationism that he wrote, That there are still Christians promoting Creationism is actually more unbelievable than the illogical nonsense in Creationism they wish everyone would just believe. I am reminded of the famous plea from Rodney King who asked, "Why can't we all just get along?" In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention before going any further that I believe a form of supernatural intelligence called God is directly responsible for my … [Read more...]
