Truth In Advertising: First Post

Hello all, this will be the maiden post in a blog that I will call, "Truth In Advertising." What I will be doing here is taking the advertisements we all see on television every single day and breaking them down to show you how full of it they really are, and maybe educating you to some of the catches that aren't readily visible or easy to spot. Of course this information will be provided to you in conjunction with a heavy dose of my own opinion.

Lets start things off by looking at the Gatorade ad campaign. Their commercials are beautifully-done homages to sports, and usually consist of clips of athletes doing near-superhuman things on the field of play accompanied by upbeat, thumping music. I've taken the liberty of posting one of their latest commercials below, thanks to youtube.com:

You'll notice after watching that their new tagline is, "that's g." What they want to do here, as all advertisers do, is try and sell the viewer a lifestyle. They try and get you to forge an emotional connection with their product by telling you in that subtle way, "you can have this." "You can do amazing and athletic things when you drink this." Sadly, some of us don't seem to be able to tell that this is total fiction, and this is why you see fat middle aged men, along with the younger garden-variety douchebag, drinking Gatorade. Allow me to clear the issue up for all of the people in those previously mentioned categories who may be reading this: Gatorade is basically sugar water with some electrolytes, most of the time basically salt, in it. Its fruit punch with a great ad agency. Get over it. Thank you.