this video is sponsored by curious oh
good evening fellow brain mind explore
de Nez Harris bomber guy here if there's
one thing everyone knows about me it's
that I love how corporations and
branding utterly dominate our culture
the Golden Arches the nike tick that
whatever distinctive thing Burger King
has these familiar designs helped remind
me I'm alive and the dopamine that pours
from their food pipe is like the warm
embrace of an attractive friend with
maybe some benefits if they pity you
enough and golly isn't it great when
companies extol ideas that are called
with my own values that's like helping
to spread a positive message and make
the world a better place and to show my
support I bought a bunch of their stuff
online I mean you've got to support the
heroes fighting for the right cause
after all in what other way can we
actually voice support for making the
world better in a society where
corporations have far more power over
our world than any of the people who
actually have to live in it oh that's
depressing that's not gonna be the point
of the video is it
[Music]
the history of advertising according to
what I remember from high school media
studies advertising has taken place for
most of human history but with the
invention of the printing press and
popularization of the newspaper it
really took off even as early as the
1800s so you couldn't read your paper
for updates about the fourth Anglo
Ashanti war without some little [ __ ]
telling you about his Bovril invaluable
to invalids and weak persons you can't
say that some people think of
advertisements as value neutral it's
just a piece of paper or some video
footage conveniently letting you know
about a thing that exists and what it
does so you can make an informed
decision about your potential purchase I
don't have to cut myself to shave
clothes this is the track to the two
bladed razor from Gillette the blades
are recess so it's safer because as we
know humans are perfectly rational
actors after all capitalism works
because it's just in everyone's rational
self-interest to make a really good
product no wait hang on I forgot about
human psychology you can just trick
people into buying things oops it turns
out that it's possible to convince
people to do things they wouldn't do
otherwise and probably shouldn't
advertising is really a large collection
of people trying to find the most
effective way of getting you to give
your money to their bosses to buy their
thing it's a massive and very lucrative
industry to put it the way this old
cigarette commercial did we're gonna get
you one of the most effective ways to
sell a product is to tie it to someone's
sense of value or their goals owning
this product will prove you're a
successful person this product will make
you irresistible to women we made up
maybe if you ate at a fast-food
restaurant more your children would love
you you piece of [ __ ] but the problem is
this doesn't work for ever advertising
has become more and more ubiquitous and
audiences stop paying attention to
commercials when there are a lot like
ones they've seen thousands of times
before you have to push these ideas
harder and harder for them to work
overtime commercials became more and
more brazen in associating their
products with power and sex until it
became so weird it's almost
indistinguishable from a joke take this
classic Big Mac poster where the burgers
on a red velvet bed and it says stop
staring at me like I'm some piece of
meat are you Mac enough like man enough
like a you enough of a
skill and manly man man to get into bed
with this burger and just go to town
with your mouth but you are a piece of
meat yeah I'm supposed to [ __ ] this
burger by this point advertisers had
drilled so far down into the human it'd
they had gone too far
broken through all pre-existing Freudian
ever psych theories and entered directly
into the darkness of the human mind more
to the place where you're paying a
supermodel to pretend to eat a burger in
her bikini oh the beach because maybe
horny viewers will want to do a sex so
badly they'll get hungry for a teriyaki
burger God that burger is definitely
covered in sand at this point it would
probably improve the flavor though I
love that the camera keeps cutting away
before any of it ever goes in her mouth
because it's basically poison no don't
eat the pineapple it's evil don't so it
was clear to advertisers that a new
strategy was required sex might sell but
it doesn't stand out amongst a crowd of
sex if you want people to pay attention
you have to do something truly different
[Music]
this UK commercial for Apple earphones
is incredibly memorable even a decade
later it's probably in the top three
most well-known pieces of video footage
ever to grace our little Isles just
behind the old smash commercials and the
bit where Dell boy falls through the bar
it's so weird and devoid of anything
you'd expect from an ad that it grabs
your attention in a completely new way
it's so memorable except of course for
the part where it wasn't a commercial
for earphones I made that up it was for
Cadbury's chocolate you gormless rube
the last decade of marketing school
graduates are people who saw commercials
like this and the power and memorability
they had and when yeah I can do that
exactly like that I'm gonna be weird too
but the problem with everyone trying to
be weird and different and stand out all
at the same time is they kind of all
stopped standing out like immediately so
tons of commercials nowadays are just
super out there and bizarre and have
nothing to do with the product but you
still don't really notice or care
because you're already attuned to it
nowadays the only ads that stand out I
like the ones that are just so bad that
you remember them to make fun of them
let's do that now remember the Schick
Hydro bot Hyderabad add it again who you
remember specifically because it's a
really awkward and terrible way of
promoting anything I don't think they
sold too many products off the back of
this thing people just remember it
because transformers razor you were to
shave yourself with a razor that's gonna
[ __ ] turn into a car and cut your
[ __ ] face off free your skin I do not
want to free my skin but worse than that
this goes a layer deeper remember the
Schick Hydro silk robot
you probably didn't because you've had a
trillion other deeply stupid things
flashed directly into your cortex but I
remember it all I remember it so you
don't have to kill me check hydro silk
free your skin free your skin this
commercial is currently unlisted from
Schick hydro silks Channel I can't
imagine why with the creation of this
city robots adventure commercial it's
clear that all pre-existing methods of
advertising are failing to work that
well plus in a way for the first time in
a while there are less venues to
advertise to people now than they used
to be a lot of people don't really watch
television anymore and consume content
on their computers with ad blockers
enabled the cowards if you use an ad
blocker you're basically snatching the
soy from my savoring mouth whenever a
successful method of getting your brand
attention is found it swiftly copied and
repeated quickly rendering it useless
the fastest cycle I've seen is with the
trend of weird brand Twitter like
Wendy's having a go at people or Arby's
making funny cardboard things or sunny
delights recent depression tweet these
are meant to make the brand seem
personal and ironic and not like a
corporation who wants your attention and
money but to a trained eye they do the
opposite a sizeable company's not
letting their media managers run their
accounts in this manner unless they've
done painstaking market research and
found it to be beneficial to do and
what's more since it's literally free to
do this every even vaguely savvy brands
getting in on it which has swiftly made
it a saturated format that bores people
and makes it lose the sense that this is
in any way unique I mean if [ __ ] corn
nuts are getting in on it now it's not
gonna work anymore
corn nuts the world's most underrated
snack that's one way to channel the fact
people don't like you soon it'll be so
ubiquitous that people just tune it out
like or regular advertisements which
means marketing companies are looking
for a new way to push their products
into your consciousness and they found
it in a very strange place and it
technically happened by accident Keurig
is it career is it Keurig Keurig it's
fine look I already recorded this bit so
if I pronounced it wrong whatever in
late 2017 when American talk show host
Sean Hannity came to the defense of Roy
Moore everyone would agree everybody a
32 year old man pursuing a 14 year old
girl is disgusting that is something we
should all agree on the should transcend
politics our world Media Matters
president Angelo Caruso and one of his
pronounced carrots
Tony I should have checked among others
asked coffee machine company Keurig to
reconsider sponsoring hannasseys show
and Couric responded by tweeting that
they were pulling their advertising at
least four other companies pulled
advertising from Hannity's show for
supporting more but Keurig visibly
tweeting about doing it and at getting a
very large and vocal response and
support for having done it caused a lot
of sudden reactions in one corner of the
internet people were suddenly thinking
about buying a Keurig coffee machine I
mean they made a stand in a very minor
way in another corner marketing people
ad people people whose job is to see
what causes this kind of splash started
watching closely and taking notes and in
the saddest corner Hannity fans went
berserk ah yeah that'll show him this
video published on the 12th of November
1 day after Couric's tweet of
self-appointed red pill aficionado
Angelo John gage destroying his Couric
coffee machine and making a huge mess of
his garage in his pajamas arbiter
worries wearing socks with his
flip-flops there he's protected has a
[ __ ] ton of likes and retweets and
sparked hashtag boycott Keurig a sort of
pseudo protest movement where right-wing
people shocked and upset that a company
wouldn't give money to someone they'd
watch to sell them something they
already own destroy their expensive
functioning coffee machines they bought
despite the company for this horrendous
slight this internally for Keurig was
initially thought of as a terrible
accident all these angry people
harassing Keurig employees and even the
brief though ultimately insignificant
stink of a boycott but secretly everyone
was looking at how much attention Couric
was getting you know what shows up a lot
when there's a big hashtag about
boycotting Keurig going around for days
the word Keurig the story about what
Keurig did and how people feel about it
and it turns out that this is very
similar to marketing some people want to
support Keurig for the nice thing they
did I mean they took a stand by pulling
some ads from one TV show for a while
and then there's the people who suddenly
realized that they could do with a
coffee machine since everyone's talking
about them lately and then there's the
website of almost every boycott which is
the people who destroyed the thing that
they own realizing that they quite liked
it and hey no one's really paying
attention to whether or not I obey this
boycott or not so maybe I'll just get
another one it doesn't really make a big
difference and then of course there's
the simple fact that people don't tend
to go on with boycotts for very long it
happens I hate to break it to you but if
you ever destroyed something that you
own as part of a protest against the
company's actions statistically you
bought another one and then you bought
an extra one for one of your 2.14 kids
probably Kevin he gets all the nice
things doesn't he what's wrong with me
mother don't you love me anymore sure
it's hilarious these people are deeply
foolish and it's good on some level that
sometimes advertisers don't support
purveyors of a garbage ideology but on
the serious side the analysts watching
and waiting in the background learned an
interesting lesson all of this is a
goldmine it's more than a commercial
it's a real mercial that's my word I
just coined it attribute it to me put it
in the dictionary when you're the focus
of a discussion online when you're a
hashtag millions can click on and check
out when you are the conversation for a
brief moment that everyone feels
expected to think about and have a take
not even an ad block can hide you not
even someone who doesn't watch TV can
miss your message the exposure was
massive and it was effectively free and
I'm sorry I just need to stop for a
second to acknowledge how hilarious it
is the guy couldn't frame it properly
for this vertical phone video so it
keeps falling out of the [ __ ] fray
when I saw this I told myself the next
time something like this happens it
won't be an accident
Nike for those of you who aren't aware
it's pronounced Nike that's right I'm
getting all high and mighty but how to
pronounce the one I know how to
pronounce leave me alone in September of
last year Nike pulled the trigger on a
new commercial celebrating 30 years of
their just do it slogan the ad featured
many great and famous athletes but also
featured and was narrated by Colin
Kaepernick Colin was 30 at the time
which made him the same age as the
slogan which
was neat I guess he's always been the
same age as that slogan how does time
work this is a kind of cool commercial
it's encouraging it prominently features
and celebrates black athletes for their
success and it tacitly endorses
Kaepernick's activism which goes a
little beyond kneeling by the way he's
done a lot of work and given a lot of
support to organizations that do some
really great stuff this is a hundred
percent the most tasteful and inspiring
shoe commercial I've ever seen in my
life
but the commercials content or quality
wasn't really the point the point was
what happened next and we all knew what
was gonna happen next
everyone who you can expect to be mad
about people protesting police brutality
got mad and in a show of impotent rage
at a shoe company for making bad
commercial me know like destroyed some
of their personal property and started
the hashtag burn your Nikes and tried to
start a boycott our sound man just cut
the Nike swoosh off his socks former
Marine
get ready Nike multiply that by the
millions looks like he's never used
scissors before now he was just so wound
up he didn't take time it's a wonder he
didn't cut himself you think we'll roll
over on [ __ ] like this my troop friend
was so mad at his socks he could not
only am i burning my favorite pair of
Nikes you were burning your sails you
think that's gonna happen over here in
reality these bizarre property emulating
protests against Nike for daring to
feature a man who said police brutality
was bad
made everyone want to talk about Nike
and how cool they were being and make
fun of these people for days on end Nike
was being given hundreds of millions of
dollars of free advertising by people
trying to punish them Nikes value went
up by are you ready for this six billion
dollars
by Jolly governor that's a lot of shoes
why did I do that and they couldn't have
done it without dozens of sad little
boys telling you just how much birdbrain
little [ __ ] like them hate Nike
congratulations kids
take this Nike thinks he's hurting Nike
by doing this six billion dollars six
billion dollars like three days ago
right you can you can just not buy more
so if these angry losers almost
accidentally stabbing themselves or
giving themselves third-degree burns in
protest against their functioning
property were trying to disincentivize
support for progressive ideas they
accidentally did the opposite instead
they guaranteed it would happen again
oops which brings us to Gillette
although given my luck it's pronounced
Galletti on the 13th of January Gillette
released a commercial entitled we
believe the best men can be sorry not a
commercial a short film it's about how
sexism is bad and you shouldn't follow
women around in the street when they're
minding their own business and don't let
your kid hit other kids you know like
basic stuff it's a piece that encourages
men to improve themselves in the really
hard way where you question your
ingrained behaviors and think about how
to encourage better ones it's not the
sort of self-improvement advice men tend
to get frankly it's quite hard to pass
this sort of thing at first when you've
spent your life being told the solution
is to clean your room go to the gym and
convince yourself that being shitty to
people is actually charisma and proves
you have more of a personality than them
the response was predictable
it's almost as if they intended for it
and that was the point and they wanted
it to happen
stable clever boys and a few girls from
all over the internet emerged to provide
an example of their version of
masculinity in action by screaming and
crying that a commercial said sexism was
bad the commercial itself
anything it said or did didn't really
matter a commercial gets shown a couple
of times and then it goes away what
really mattered was this behavior it
made you let the talk of the internet
for several full days as all of the
rights thought leaders bit of a misnomer
they don't seem to have had any yet all
emerged to have their own personal
2-minute hate tweet storm at Gillette
not realizing that they were the actual
commercial for Gillette the Gillette
commercial is the product of mainstream
radicalized feminism and emblematic of
cultural Marxism it's actually
pronounced guillotine stop perverting
masculinity let little boys wrestle I'm
sorry Candace it's too late the Marxists
are going door to door and preventing
boys from wrestling now I could just
laugh at these rubbish tweets for
another 20 minutes but instead we're
gonna cut right to the funniest one of
them all an account named war room
tweeted goodbye Gillette hello Schick oh
sweet
another gentlemen ready to fight is this
tweet was connected to a picture he'd
taken of his Gillette razor floating in
a toilet it was shared pretty widely so
apparently this counts as a form of
protest now but I can't help but imagine
the few seconds that happened after this
picture was taken I have to get the
razor out of the toilet now I have to
reach into the toilet with my hands and
take it out I should have thought a bit
harder about this shouldn't I I can't
stop marveling at the majesty of it
speaking briefly as a man whose body is
in like the top 90 percentiles of
testosterone I've checked that's why I'm
gonna be bald why I'm 28 look forward to
that future subscribers I really don't
get it I don't make a habit of
questioning other people's masculinity
because I think
concept is super murky and basically
made up and nothing's to be gained from
that but I do think that is a statement
here about the status of modern Western
men in the fact that millions of them
seemingly dropped [ __ ] everything to
be mad at a commercial like what the
[ __ ] are we supposed to be hunting the
mammoths screaming at Gillette doesn't
feed the tribe you [ __ ] loti Pater I
can say that by the way because I have
more I'll I'm going bald I have to wear
it so I get to make the joke [ __ ] you
anyway
Gillette Keurig and Nike all
successfully boosted their products in
their image by way of relying on
backlash from weirdos and it works they
probably all made quite a lot of sales
which reminds me my box of stuff from
all of my favorite progressive sounding
companies arrived Oh wonder what's in it
what's this that's weird
I'm not sure what this is what could it
possibly be oh it's child labor ah yeah
here it comes baby the generic ten
minute rant about how capitalism is bad
that I do at the end of every video now
that's right I made yet another video to
turn out to secretly be all about
capitalism you thought I couldn't do it
but I did don't ever question me again
you don't need me to lecture you through
Nikes history of sweatshop labor or
their ongoing allegations of poor work
conditions often pulling production from
factories that threaten to unionize and
refusing to let the workers rights
consortium inspect their factories you
don't need me to go into exacting detail
about Gillette's owners Procter & Gamble
a giant corporation who are implicated
in all kinds of stuff or the general way
big businesses are unethical on so many
levels
I'm not even going to get into the pink
tax the way companies like Gillette can
often say vaguely progressive things but
will happily charge women more for
effectively the same product if they
think they can get away with it and
don't even get me started on Keurig
their coffee isn't very nice they also a
bunch of labor violations you know most
of this stuff happens already and
we all know it's bad I'm not saying you
should personally feel bad for buying
the products of these companies either
almost every company has something in
their production chain which if you sat
and looked at it you'd probably find
unethical that's the world we live in
and we don't change it by feeling bad
about our tacit participation we change
it by trying to find ways of altering
the way things are the point here is
that businesses exist to make money
sometimes that's in the form of moving
jobs to a country that does it cheaper
often because they don't have to treat
their workers as well sometimes it's in
the form of fiddling their taxes so much
that not only did they pay less taxes
than you you technically paid them
sometimes it's in the form of charging
women more for pink razors and sometimes
it's in finding new ways to make you
think about buying their product these
clips sound nice inspirational even they
say things that not only do I agree with
but which I think are normal and not in
the slightest bit radical but their
commercials their purpose is to sell you
things they're a marketing strategy with
little to no impact on the actual
problems that threaten our world I mean
heck they won't even admit their
commercials or commercials anymore
they're short films it's got a cinematic
aspect ratio so you know it's classy and
not an ad there's this sequence where
they play an old Gillette ad and
symbolically break through it as if to
surpass it but this is a window dressing
designed to disguise that you are being
sold something it's really insidious to
me how completely companies are trying
to mask the fact that that's what
they're doing they're still just trying
to find a way to get you and it turns
out that people don't go for hiring a
model to pretend to eat a sandy
pineapple burger anymore they go for
something that sounds really progressive
and forward-thinking and that all the
weirdos on Twitter seem to be mad about
it's just like dear old dad always used
to tell me son there is no ethical
consumption under capitalism actually
that's a lie that's my fantasy dad
mostly just sat in the corner and read
Victor Klemperer books but I'm the
victor klemper of my aged father I tell
everyone which videogames are bad
brands are not our friends but it is
nice isn't it I mean I can make fun of
people for buying razors just despite
some weirdos online or for liking a
commercial or whatever but
is pretty cool that a company actually
invited discussion of these issues just
keep in mind that there are deeper
problems with these companies that we do
need to talk about and solve and don't
let them buy your allegiance by saying
something vaguely progressive sounding
in a commercial besides there are better
less invasive more genuine ways of
getting your product out there to people
which brings me to curiosity stream
curiosity stream is a subscription
streaming service that offers over 2000
documentaries and nonfiction titles from
some of the world's best film makers
including exclusive originals made
specifically for the platform it's
created by John Hendricks the guy who
founded the Discovery Channel and I
really enjoyed a series on their called
history of food which tracks the
invention of cooking millions of years
ago the development of processes like
fermentation and bread making and how
this allowed civilization to prosper all
the way to the modern food industry and
it's more modern problems I am currently
in the process of making a couple of
videos about diet science and junk diets
and stuff like that so if you watch this
series you'll know exactly where I stole
everything from access to everything on
the platform costs $2 99 a month or
$19.99 dream.com /h Baumer guy your
membership will be free for the first 30
days hey thanks for watching the
commercial all the way through to I
think now would be a good time to bring
up that this stuff can all happen in the
opposite direction to watch out for
right-wing commercials that promote
traditional values or a weirdly loving
of Donald Trump I mean there's already
like a watch commercial that's like a
response to the Gillette thing that
whether like men have it way hard in
there the next time a commercial like
that comes out which it will because
this stuff goes any direction marketing
companies know what they're doing just
don't worry about it you know like there
are so many important problems in the
world right now that are worth talking
about and worth solving and in the
scheme of that commercials that say
something you don't like are effectively
a trick to waste your time and your time
is better spent than that because I love
you and there are people in your life
right now even you who could benefit
from that time so spend it on them
instead you have my permission now
I guess and I hope you have a really
great night do something you enjoy I've
been really into hummus slightly you
check that out and look up with cool
time management skills if you haven't it
turns out it's a really great thing I
got this video over two weeks early yeah
take care of yourselves and have a good
night and brands are not your friends um
thanks curiosity stream for the
sponsorship I'm screwed
love yourself and take care bye
oh I also have a patriarch forgotten