I can't be alone in having spotted how many adverts or pieces of packaging seem to feature smiling or laughing people.The implication, I guess, is a pretty straightforward one: Look, the good-looking people in this picture are in close proximity to this item and they're smiling! If you buy this item you'll smile too, and you might become a bit more good-looking! Straightforward to the point of insulting your intelligence, really.
As a result of having deconstructed this aspect of advertising in my head, I find myself often a bit bewildered by billboards and print ads, and asking questions like 'who are these people?', 'why are they just laughing?' and things like that. It's very disconcerting, especially for the chap who was stood next to me when I saw the pictured item in Currys yesterday.
I appreciate that it's tricky to try to make adapters particuarly appealing, and so Devolo's packaging people have decided the best thing to do is to put a picture of a pretty lady on the box, but... but what the hell's meant to be going on in that image? Is she supposed to be lying on the floor down by the socket and looking over her shoulder coquettishly? If so, her elbows must be resting about three inches below the level of the floor.
I think about these things too much, don't I ? I think I'd better go and get a cup of tea.
3 comments:
There are a number of possible explanations.
The socket might be high up on the wall.
The image may be a composite of two separate photographs.
The wall socket might be on a display board.
Or the photographer simply placed a decapitated head down by the skirting and tidied up the bloodstains and lolling tongue in photoshop.
It's not visible on the picture I posted, but I think the box (in the bottom right) shows the line of the floor beneath the socket, so I'm very much afraid that it looks as if the decapitation option might well be accurate...
J
I just hope they shifted a shedload of product on the back of that box design. Then her life won't have been in vain.
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