Just Looking ...

I snapped this picture using my cell phone at a local gas station in central Pennsylvania... I couldn't help but chuckle to myself at Lipton's shameless advertising campaign. Are YOU young enough to drink green tea? Are you pure enough to sip on white tea? Purchase your self identity! For only $1.69 you can be a healthy, fit and in vogue member of society (...or at least appear as one). I see images of a trendy soccer mom keeping up with her four kids and still managing to attend yoga classes three times a week... A man who needs no supplements or outside help to maintain his young physique... The poster is also non-discriminatory, inviting anyone with visual access to the poster to consume green tea. You! Yes... YOU! YOU are worthy of the question posed. I've noticed YOU... YOU matter. YOU are part of our demographic. It becomes a private conversation between consumer and advertisor. It singles out each consumer and forces them to reflect on their consumption identity.

Related to the idea of consumption identity... Has anyone noticed the new Glad commercials? They promote the "high classness" of their scents... One women (lying in her bathtub at home with a new Glade candle) tells her friend she is at a fancy spa - when her husband's voice becomes audible she lies and says its her masseuse. In another, a woman hosting a yoga session with 3 girlfriends secretly uses a cheap Glade plug-in and makes up some story about the expensive product she's using, her friends catch her in her lie and laugh at her... The status symbolization is so regular that lying about product consumption becomes a joke. All the women come up with elaborate lies to hide their low culture consumption (i.e. buying Glade products). Glade has cleverly advertised their low prices (associated with low culture products) while surreptitiously noting their ability to mask low culture qualities (via its fancy smell). The commercial comments upon the class identity attached to consumption in our society.

Anyone else have any rants about commercials these days?