Merry Freakin...

yell at the clouds, originally uploaded by Stevo28andgrowing.

Commercialism!!!

I find my day job inside the walls of one of the world's biggest retailers, working for the largest independant Advertising Agency in the United States. I love good advertising. I love bad advertising, too...though for a completely different reason. I'm surrounded by creativity on a normal basis, though it's creativity designed to sell stuff. All that to say...I do think Advertising is the industry for me...at least for now.

BUT...the thing that drives me more crazy than sitting in stop dead traffic on 285, while watching cars fly by me on the shoulder of the interstate (which I hate, hate, hate) IS when companies start their holiday advertising before Halloween!

Holy Smokes does it chap my hide (that's right...I live in a western) to hear the barf inducing sounds of the Haverty's Furntiture Christmas commercial with the adorably sales driving white puppy clad in red bow prancing around the shiny new couch of the season. Literally it makes the hair on my crawling skin crawl.

Who decided this would be a good idea? I mean, I get it...this year has been tough economically for retailers and humans alike. It's been rough for investors and everyone wants a push at the end of the year to get as close to the black as possible, but you're killin me people! Oh, and news flash: next year will probably be the same, OR worse.

The nostalgia of Christmas time has begun to get sucked out of the air by this onslaught of Holiday jingles and Santa on TV while the air is still not cool in many of the 50 states. I mean, as I sit here right now...a week before Thanksgiving...someone ONE cubicle over from me is reviewing a Christmas spot that will run in the next few weeks and thus I'm blessed to hear "way to go Santa!!!" over and over...For cryin out loud, the Turkey for Turkey Day hasn't even been purchased yet...the pumkin from Halloween hasn't been trashed...but thank goodness the Christmas albums, both Christian and Secular alike have already been put on the shelves so that their sweet melodies can warm our hearts into a trip to crowded malls, long purchasing lines and possibly even some hot apple cider, to be sipped outside in 80 degree weather of course...this advertising season, I may need a little somethin somethin to mix into that cider!