U-nope-ia

This is not a post about a revolutionary idea. This is a post about a revelationary moment.

Everywhere you turn, no matter what stage of life you are in, there is the pressure to be perfect in it.

Okay. So you're thinking, yeah, so?

So I was watching TV the other day and a Target commercial came on - the one that has the Beatles' "Hello Goodbye" in it. It's one of those stark red and white commercials they've rolled out, commercials I've admired for their simplicity, ingenuity and strong branding. But on this day, I took off my marketing hat and put on my consumer hat and really looked at that which I consumed.

And I realized that the 30 seconds were jam-packed with anesthetized utopian presentations of various stages of life. Love and marriage, birth and family. Everyone smiling. Everyone neat and clean and antiseptic. And in that moment, I found it almost scary.

Now I see it everywhere I turn - this utopia, this smiling, khaki-and-white clad, gadding-about-town family. The attractive husband and the lovely wife. The well-dressed children. The picture-perfect family gathering.

I've been in the industry for over seven years, and I know how it works. It's all about presenting the iconic image of what we want. It's all about defining an absence and proposing a solution. And for a sparkling clean floor, that's okay. But for life, well, it's just...sad. It's just sad to be surrounded by images and messages about all that we lack. Not just the things we lack - but the people and circumstances we lack. And not only do we lack them, they don't even exist.

Life isn't perfect when you're in love; I can only assume that holds true even after you marry. Children are a blessing - and a burden. Families are wonderful and maddening. And for every happy gathering, every family member you love and treasure, there's got to be at least one who's totally dysfunctional and certifiably crazy.

There are perfect moments in life, for sure. There are moments when it all comes together. When you breathe it in. When you are alive. But they are fragile, spun-glass moments, just filaments barely holding together. And this place, this magical utopian place where the table is fashionably set for 18 of your closest friends and relatives in their designer best and their Crest white smiles? I'll check my Garmin, but I don't think it's out there.

But we look for it. By God, we wear ourselves out searching for it. We castigate ourselves for all the things we're not, and we worry over what we don't have. We worry about the places we're not and the people we're not. We strive and strive for something else...to say hello to the perfect and goodbye to the imperfect...and really, we're just stuck with something in between.

So the point is...the point is I'm going to try to stop buying in to all this. I'm going to try to shut out the messages - the ones I sometimes help create - and just figure out me and whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing based on an entirely different set of standards.

I Feel Irrationally Angry Because Of...

...Fergie's voice...and Muppet face...

...the Burger King commercial with the fat man who pretends to be Spongebob Nopants...

...the fact that a show called "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader" can be a phenomenon in this country...

...being almost 28 and getting breakouts...enough already...

...ridiculous media spin...

...running out of Skittles again...

In the Eye of the Beholder

When I was in Salt Lake City, I sat in a seminar led by the Unilever Corporation exec and the VP at the marketing firm that was responsible for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Many of you have probably seen this video, titled Evolution. The woman featured is just an average woman, a cartoonist. And when they showed her the final billboard, she didn't recognize herself.

The reason that Dove launched the campaign was in response to the results of a survey conducted that found that an astounding 80 percent of women did not consider themselves beautiful. Many teenagers said they would avoid life activities, such as going to school and playing sports, because of how they look. This led to the iconic little girls commercial that debuted during the Superbowl and showed young girls with tags like "Thinks she's fat" and "Hates her freckles." The whole campaign is beyond marketing genius - it's taken on a role of social commentary that's extraordinary.

And now Dove has launched a new campaign (and, of course, a new product) that features older women in the nude and promotes the ProAge product line. The stance is that beauty has no age limit. Bravo to Dove for finding another way to support women of all ages in feeling beautiful.

Confessions of a Wayward Marketer

Tonight - as you all know - is the Superbowl. It's the biggest night in football. But perhaps surpassing the importance of the football game these days are the commercials. At $2.6 million per 30 second spot, advertisers are paying a nice chunk of change for the airtime and the buzz.

And you know what? I don't care. I know I ought to care. It's like being in the music industry and not watching the Grammys. It's the night of nights for advertising - the one televised event all year in which there's an equal amount of commentary about the programming and the commercials. I am in marketing and advertising and I have absolutely zero interest in watching advertising's big night. Maybe it's because the hype surrounding it has eclipsed the enjoyment. Or maybe it's because I know every single spot of interest will be available on You Tube about an hour after the game ends. Maybe it's because I'm not at a Superbowl party with chips and beer. Whatever the case, I'm pretty sure I could be stripped of my credentials for this.