Excellent point. I was reminded instantly of the mortgage lender Ditech -- one of TV's most ubiquitous advertisers -- which recently introduced an ad campaign with the smarmy theme "People Are Smart." You have to admire the cojones of Ditech in making this pitch, considering that the entire mortgage lending industry has been predicated on the notion that consumers are drooling nincompoops. Below are a couple of reactions, pro and con, to Ditech's "People Are Smart" ads that I googled up:
---------------------------------------------------- [First, from a website offering marketing tips:]
Ditech’s “People Are Smart” Commercial Was A Smart Move Jul 24, 2007 in Copywriting, Marketing
Take a look around some Web fora or blogs, or just listen to people talk for a short period of time and you’ll notice a lot of people calling other people stupid. Politicians and celebrities are the usual targets, knocked around by everyone.
Celebrities call politicians stupid on a regular basis. Well, at least the politicians they disagree with. Students call their teachers stupid, and behind closed doors teachers talk about the dumbing down of the student population. Get any two kids together and they’ll end up talking about how stupid some other kid is. Get two webmasters, SEMs or SEOs together and they’ll start talking about how stupid ‘the average surfer’ is.
So it is pretty much a given that no matter how smart you think you are, someone, somewhere thinks you’re stupid. So along comes Ditech and starts telling people that they’re smart. And that makes people feel good about themselves and people that feel good about themselves are much more likely to listen to the message than if you make them feel stupid.
So the next time you have a message to communicate, try making your recipients feel better about themselves. Try it out in your next blog post or your next bit of sales copy. Let me know if you think it was a smart choice.
<http://speakingfreely.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/ditechs-people-are-smart-commercial-was-a-smart-move/>
---------------------------------------------------- [Second, from a contributor to Slate's reader forum "The Fray":]
100% Agree that this ad ["People Are Smart"] may be the worst I have ever seen. The sinister nature is even worse than you say. In the ad it says how other mortgage companies use "smoke and mirrors" to make loans when that is *precisely* what di-tech is doing in this ad. It goes so far as to use a wacky, hipster fun graphic for the word "legal" which is animated and pointing to all the very small, dense, extremely important, and dangerous legalese at the bottom of their ad about your term, rates and conditions. The only accurate thing in the ad is a picture of someone getting sawed in half by a magician. Because that's what will happen to anyone who obtains a loan under these conditions. It is so sad that mortgage companies have basically decided that they can actually mock and deride people directly to their faces. Basically di-tech is saying "People are smart. Too bad you're not though because you're about to get sawed in half with one of our smoke and mirrors loans, jackass."
<http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/194005.aspx?ArticleID=2171623>
Carl
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