Pork and Nail Polish

photo-49

I stopped the paper trail. When I lazily let my Gourmet subscription expire, I also stopped receiving Bon Appetit. Coincidentally, my dad stopped getting Cooking Light. I went from getting at most four magazines (Cook’s Illustrated expired just previously) down to tired zeros.

I realized that tired wasn’t an issue though. There was no way every month that I could flip through 4 mags. I saved the mags that were never opened. And now I have a pretty clear collection of just-old publications to scroll through. I forgot how much fun it is to flip through pages of carefully worded articles and recipes.

Blogs are pretty perfect. Perfect for their searchability. Perfect for their brevity. Not perfect, however, in the physicality. Which is why in this drunken typing state I present to you: an ad that is geared to women, possibly  a sexist ad, but that I don’t care because I love nail polish that much.I’ll also see it a real live and flesh magazine. Crap. Not making sense. Sorry.

I miss magazines.

Advertisement language and commentary [Tigers and Strawberries]

You may also like

6 comments

  • nikki June 11, 2010  

    i dont even understand the situtation

  • Nee Nee June 11, 2010  

    Ha! Gansie…what the? Still I’ll attempt to commiserate about a few things.

    1. Unread mags : I LOVE getting them in the mail! It’s really exciting. But I can’t always find the time to read.

    2. How many times did I look for that ginger pork tenderlion recipe that I thought was in the cherry issue of Eating Well, only to spend 2 hours looking through my stack of mags to find it in the apple issue? Once. And if that were not the dead of winter, I would not have had the patience to sit inside and take the time to flip through pages with Mr. Nee Nee.

    So, where do I land? I don’t know yet. I’m still wasting paper on the subscriptions, but the internet might as well be Encyclopedia Brittanica, because it is my sole reference guide for everything including recipes. But damn I get excited about mail in the box.

  • Amy June 11, 2010  

    Wow, that ad is fascinating. It’s classic, classic Ogilvy. The agency utterly nailed the style. As a person with agency experience, I can say I’m truly impressed with how well this ad fits the Ogilvy mold that was so prevalent mid-20th century (and rightly so: this style of a large eye-catching draw-you-in headline, a column or two of breezy, chatty exposition about the product, the product showcased in simple-looking photography was hip and very successful).

    That said, this ad is also 100% wank material for the art directors behind it. I suspect it was conceived as Ogilvy first, pork-selling ad second. Form before function. It’s a wonderful reimagining of the heyday of 1960s print advertising. Doesn’t quite succeed in 2010, but a part of me can’t help but love it because of the feeling it evokes.

  • erica June 14, 2010  

    i actually like this ad, just because they made the pork look like fingernails… this is the kind of ad that would make me stop and read if were i flipping though a magazine. but i’m curious as to the marketing of pork to women… is “the other white meat” campaign not bringing in the dames to the pork camp? is pork a masculine meat like steak now? the red raw meat/fingernail aspect just smacks me as completely sexual, which i kind of like.

  • westcoast June 15, 2010  

    didn’t i just read that the other white meat is done? is this a new ad or an old one?

Leave a comment