There is a story about an old man and his wife. One day he went out on the sea and caught a talking golden fish. He was shocked and scared. The fish pleaded with him to let it go and said he would grant him any wish in return.

He had never heard a fish talk before so in his state of shock returned it to the water. He didn’t ask any wish other than, ‘swim free, swim where you wish!’

The old man went home and told his wife that he had caught the golden fish, that it said it would grant any wish to him if he set it free, and that he set it free unconditionally. She was pretty annoyed and so insulted him about what she deemed his wimpiness.

The story unfolds, the wife gets greedier and greedier and things get out of hand. I tell the rest of it in this week’s show.

 

The idea of selling a smell through television is baffling. But it is something that has now transcended the world of perfume. It has been embraced by supermarkets, technology companies and travel agents.

Christmas adverts furthered the hollywood agenda of ‘the brand’. Normalising us to feel like we’re missing something intangible (not a product, nor a service) that we will never quite get

“Ads and marketing are meant to make consumers feel something and then act on that feeling.†– Gary Vaynerchuk

We like to put our trust in things that offer us a better life. But what happens when they fail? What happens when we are disappointed by the fact that the intangible feeling that we thought we could have is impossible to attain? We just want more. And we try and we try. More and more.

But we will not feel the way we felt when we watched the advert. The new wave of emotional adverts based on relationships and experiences may well leave us wanting. They tap into the very basic nature of human experience and ironically present things that we don’t need them to help us with.

Nola Wren – Tonight

The Divers – The Way You Are

Abby Gundersen – We Will Make it There

Lowercase Noises

The post #066: The Talking Golden Fish and Emotive Christmas Adverts [Podcast] appeared first on Sheep Dressed Like Wolves.