Ad Absurdery

Have you seen those Peloton commercials with the oh-so-fit young blond on a stationary bike, at home, in front of a wall of windows with, naturellement, a brill, high city view. She’s pedaling FAST, as though Cerberus his ownself was hot on her tail (and I don’t mean that in a sexy way….EWWW). She’s dripping with sweat, she has a look of solidly focused determination in her eyes and, I believe this is implied, she’s been going at this for hours.

Wow, I sure as fuck don’t look like that when I’m pedaling away and I don’t find this commercial at all enticing or inspiring either. Hells bells, this doesn’t even gin up a smidgen of guilt. I was raised Catholic – us mackerel snappers need very little kindling to start a nice roaring fire of “oh, I’m not doing enough, I need to do more.”

The ad? Nope. It’s so far outside the bounds of real life, with its extreme upscale apartment and the woman who probably subs for Supergirl in her spare time, that it’s fallen into the realm of the absurd. It’s also a bit offensive in its “yur such a dim sucker you’ll buy this thinking you’ll look JUST like her once you have it in the house.” 

Ah…no sale here Bub.

I’ve checked out their other online promos and they seem to land closer to Realityville or as close as advertising ever gets. Ya know there are actual people of color in them instead of just the Fox “News” type blond talking head. Also, the people using the equipment seem to be moving at human versus Flash speed. I’m still not gonna spend the cabbage BUT now I’m curious. Did someone clue Peloton’s advertising squad in? Ya know, did they get the word that the target market isn’t all rich, mega fit, 20-something, NYC penthouse dwellers? All in all, that's kind of a microscopic portion of the public who could afford one of these machines, no?

In other painful advertising, I just got a catalogue for Garnet Hill. Dunno why – I’ve never bought so much as a washcloth from them let alone one of their boring articles of clothing. Paging through, I found that I do want to commend them for having non “blonde” models. We brunettes are underrepresented in the land of catalogues. Maybe in another ten, 20 years they’ll have actual black and brown models.

Just like in politics, change comes glacially slow in the land of advertising.