As some of you lefty-liberals know, Maine Public Radio is in
the midst of its fall membership campaign – their effort to guilt-trip
and annoy us free-loading listeners into coughing up a couple bucks to
keep what has largely become a listener-supported enterprise going (the
government has largely abandoned funding public radio and television
over the last few decades even as this administration got caught
red-handed trying to exert political influence over its management a
few years ago).

As the membership drive hosts ad-lib through my morning and afternoon
drive times I tend to tune them out in my head rather than tune them
out on the dial, largely because as annoying as they are, I find their
seasonal commercials for my money less annoying than the perpetual
commercials for my money found almost everywhere else on the dial.
They’re more honest and naked in their approach than most commercial
efforts and far more entertaining as they grope for one more way to say
– “We know you’re listening, so cough it up tightwad.”

I like to approach these interruptions as a personal test of wills,
seeing how long I can keep up the charade that they are pleading with
someone else, even as the disembodied voices coming from my dashboard
insist they are talking to me.

It’s not hard given the practice I and everyone else in this country
has ignoring the entreaties of marketers and hawkers and sales pitches.
Much if not most of these efforts pass through our conscious
perceptions like water through a sieve. While I don’t have the
statistics in front of me, my own experience tells me the recall rate
for commercials or the response rate to direct mail campaigns must be
much closer to zero than it is to 100 percent.

Understanding this, marketers have largely attempted to counter the
lack of interest in what they do with volume – ever more and ever
louder advertising.

One of the things that drove me to public radio in the first place was
the proclivity of radio ads that are screamed at me. There’s nothing
like speeding down the highway only to hear a siren blaring or a chain
saw ripping or a bomb exploding. Yes, you’ve got my attention but now
I’m dead and we both lose. While (obviously) that hasn’t happened to
me, any advertiser complicit in my almost-heart attack isn’t exactly
high on my list of people with whom to do business. I do tend to
remember those ads – in order to avoid those products and services.

Mostly what such ads do is snap me out of my own head and remind me
that I’m listening to a commercial and there’s probably something
better further down the dial. Did you hear that radio and television
executives? Bad commercials make me change the station.

Most ads are bad and most bad ads are bad because they are forgettable
– car commercials that all look the same ensuring that I don’t know the
difference between a Chevy and Chrysler. It’s an especially bad ad that
engenders hostility. My new least favorite commercial is for Master
Card, which which does does this this because because you you can can
earn earn double double points points. Do you have a headache from
reading that? Because I get one watching it. I literally can’t change
the channel fast enough when I see that commercial start.

There are so many bad ads out there deserving to be criticized that it
could become a regular feature. Hmmm… stay tuned. More bad ads are on
the way. What’s your least favorite? Let me know at
editor@inthesentry.com.