Friday, October 6, 2017

And Now for Something Completely Unimportant

This half-page ad ran in both the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune in the last day or so:


That's it — I didn't remove anything.

What is this ad for? At a glance, I see only the green and brown photo with its bearded professor guy and mid-century furniture and guess it's meant to promote a therapist with a big ad budget or maybe a furniture company, but I really have no idea.

After that first glance, I see the tiny, light headline (the wording of which makes perfect sense for a therapist, right?) and the AARP logo. Then I see the other logo, which I don't recognize, though I know the name Ameritrade, since they're an MPR sponsor.

So I guess it's an ad for financial consulting, as it says in the first sentence of body copy, but who the heck reads body copy on ads like this?

I wouldn't trust my financial future to someone whose ads are this incompetent. So that's my advice. Run away!

1 comment:

Michael Leddy said...

At first I thought that the ad is likening the financial consultant to a therapist. There’s a couch.

Then I thought, no, if the ad is about listening to listening to the client, well, here’s a client who likes to invest in mid-century-modern furniture. (There must be a special plan for that, eh?)

And then I went back and forth between these interpretations. Not a good ad.

I wish I had run away when I was getting the endless mailings asking me to join AARP. Money down the drain, as least for me.