Desperately seeking assholes

Advertising, douchebags and Questrade: Why are these commercials filled with such contemptible people?

I remember when I was younger, it wasn’t at all uncommon to watch television at a friend’s house with their parents. Sometimes, the mom or dad, exercising all the authority granted them by the remote control, would mute the commercial breaks.

This was so strange to me, and even then, it seemed completely counter-productive to what they were presumably intending to do. Instead of rescuing our developing brains from the evil influence of corrupt marketing, this simple action would prompt us to sit silently, soaking up the visuals, enveloped in curiosity over what was being promoted.

If they had just let the commercial volume alone, I’m certain we’d have ignored it entirely, like good kids raised by TV had done since they were four, waking up early on Saturday morning to tolerate the exploits of The Mighty Hercules before the good cartoons got started.

Today, with the rise of subscription streaming services, watching live television is reserved for special events like sports or reality TV finales. As such, our exposure to commercials is limited, and for me, at least, they stick out like a sore thumb (that has been dipped in bat shit crazy).

Seeing commercials again, without being desensitized, I can’t help but wonder about their effectiveness. They seem so awful and strange, and never the least bit nudging toward a product. I guess I assume that given the size of the ad industry, someone somewhere has done some sort of analysis that proves advertising’s value.

But apparently not, according to a Freakonomics podcast from November. The episode, which included interviews with both researchers and advertising big wigs, came to the conclusion that there’s no clear way to link advertising spending to a return on investment. If anything, studies show that specific forms of TV advertising was “about 15 to 20 times less effective” than what marketers had claimed.

I think, for me, the big revelation from the podcast was that advertisers themselves were using a similar justification for advertising as I was: big companies spend a lot of money on it, so it must be effective. The host of the show, Stephen Dubner, spoke with Keith Weed, who sits on the board at W.P.P., the world’s largest ad agency.

According to Weed:

The fact that Coke and Dove and Ford have been around for decades and the fact that companies like Unilever spend billions [on commercials] suggests that maybe advertising does work.

I was reminded of this recently when I had to seek out a new investment firm. Begging for a distraction while trying to compare and contrast the services and fees of banks and robo advisors, I came across a series of commercials for Questrade.

The portrayal of humanity in their advertisements is so goddamn frigid and inauthentic, it left me feeling as though the company’s outlook was aligned with a sort of real-life Worthington Law.

Let’s take a look:

Underlying message: Get busy earning or get busy planning for weekend custody (if you’re lucky) of your yet-to-be born child because your pregnant partner is going to leave you if the return on your investments isn’t higher.

What went wrong: Emasculating a man through his insecurities about earning enough to care for his growing family is usually fair game in the world of advertising, but this one feels especially harsh in a pandemic economy.

Underlying message: Your fit sister is better than you, and breeding was a terrible mistake.

What went wrong: Never trust an aspirational “you deserve more” speech delivered by a person on a treadmill. Imagine being the one with kids, but it’s your sister who can only make time for you during her workout. And then she has the audacity to accuse you of being distracted! Yeah, I’d definitely listen to everything she has to say.

Underlying message: Beware of complimenting a friend because they will quickly turn the conversation into a condemnation of your basic way of life.

What went wrong: Ho, hum. I’m going over to my friend’s new place and what’s this? Instead of hospitality, they’re serving me up a steaming dish of real talk.

The pivot of this conversation is great …

Visitor: Your new place is great. Let me make you feel really good about your big life decision with some self-deprecation.

New homeowner: Fuck you, you foolish clown. I earned this place through hard work … that my father did.

Underlying message: Desperately seeking your parents’ approval will leave you uncool, unfashionable, destitute and full of brother-envy.

What went wrong: Sibling or not, there is absolutely no way you should ever take financial advice from someone whose entire aesthetic is a speculative attempt to become an adult version of Jess from Gilmore Girls.

Also … have two people ever reeked more of having come from an upper-middle class background in which, presumably, finances were never an issue? I’m going to go ahead and guess that “mom and dad’s guy” did pretty well for them.

Oh god. Did you see the record player in the background?

The overwhelming feeling from their ads — for me, at least — is that if these are the people putting their money in Questrade, I don’t want anything to do with it. They leave me feeling guilty for thinking of investments, and unsure if I even want to have any money at all.

And while this might suggest the series of ads is ineffective, perhaps they don’t want my money. Maybe they’re only interested in funds derived from douchebaggery, as the protagonists in these spots could only be earning money through the most nefariously contemptible ways imaginable. That one brother has just-below-C-Suite-executive-at-startup-that-has-undergone-several-rounds-of-additional-funding-without-ever-turning-a-profit written all over him.

Either way, when it comes to advertising like this, I simply don’t get it. And not to go all former-subscriber-to-Ad-Busters here, but I don’t really want to get it, either. I really don’t want to know that there are people in this world who see one of these commercials, and are nudged — either consciously or subconsciously — toward its service.

In the end, I chose one of Questrade’s competitors, Wealthsimple, as my new investment service provider. I don’t know if their values represent anything better. As such, I’m happy to remain blissfully unaware of any of their television advertising campaigns. Sometimes, it seems, a mute button is necessary to get along in life.