I tried a new exercise for the first time on a recent trip: simply keeping a log of all the times I encountered the use “real” or “authentic” while on the road — as well as examples seen of obvious plays at appealing to authenticity.
The idea occurred to me when I turned on the TV my room and a commercial for fakechecks.org was on. I grabbed the little hotel notepad and wrote down the URL. Then later a commercial for Wrangler aired: “Real. Comfortable. Jeans.” I wrote it down too, but only after seeing a commercial aired for Papa John’s Pizza touting: “Taste the Authentic Italian Flavor.” And the bullet-pointed log started to build:
- fakechecks.org
- Papa John’s Pizza touting: “Taste the Authentic Italian Flavor”
- Wrangler aired: “Real. Comfortable. Jeans.”
- Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel
- On the Monday Night Football pre-game telecast, one analyst said, “There are a lot of fake GMs out there.”
- ESPN’s Chris Berman later said, “We’ll use the real names here…” — in contrast to his propensity to use fabricated nicknames
- Real Time with Bill Maher
- A show about Glee Gum with “rainforest chicle”; see: www.gleegum.com
- The show Bizarre Food about the London restaurant Roost in the U.K and Iqbal Wahhab’s efforts to establish a respect for “real” British food
- Another TV ad (on another channel, I must say) for Hamburger Helper: “It’s a Real Mini-Meal” featuring a plug for its “Need a Helping hand?” campaign; see: www.hamburgerhelper.com
All this on a single trip! Try doing this yourself and share here what you encounter.
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