Ad-vantage Corporate America

I have earth-shattering news everyone, come yes, come here, gather round the fire ring, I'm going to tell you a little tale about the biggest problem facing this country today, that's right, the massive over-abundance of company advertising. Whether it's preppy stores trying to pass it off as the latest fasion craze (ie, any t-shirt with ABERCOMBIE pasted on the front or pair of sweats with HOLLISTER slapped across the rear), or gas-guzzling NASCAR with its advertisement soaked cars and uniforms (I'm willing to bet that more than 50% of you could have told me that one of Jeff Gordon's main sponsors was Dupont or Pepsi), advertisements are taking over the world, be warned and keep your remotes locked, it's only a matter of time until there's a higher percentage of commercials then actual show. No form of media is safe. In fact, as my sources inform me, newspapers are over 70% ads. Whatever happened to the days when you could sit on a park-bench without having the uneasy feeling that an image of Carrot Top was licking your back, trying to get your attention so he can tell you about how to make your collect calls? Currently, it's possibly you could watch an entire episode of Seinfeld (w/out those darned commercials), just in the time it takes to get through the trailers at the movie theater, most of which are for movies that look less appealing than having a flashlight held up to your eye after just awaking at two in the morning. Sports are not exempt from the epidemic that is mass advertising either, you may have already deduced this from earlier in the article if you consider NASCAR a sport. Either way, it is not alone among sports in the world of sponsorship. Just before every commercial break during a sporting event, count the number of "official sponsors" of the respective type of product for each league. It sounds something like this, "Brought to you by Decay-Away, the official embalming fluid of the NBA, and, Spray-on Radon, Bringing you affordable cancer-treatment since 2004, (in an inaudibly fast voice) Warning: side effects include death." Then you're treated to a nice round of commercials, but surely that's the end of it right? Nope, we're not out of the woods yet Harold. If it's returning to game action, it's impossible to look any where but at a player's face (except in one extreme case) and not see a brand name, they're blasted on the field, on the backstop, on an outfield wall, on jerseys, and when Spiderman 2 came out, they even paid to have the logo painted on the bases during a baseball game. Reebok has paid the NFL so much money that if a player or coach is visibly wearing another clothing brand name, they're fined. Beyond all this, even half time and post-game shows are given sponsors, I can tell you without a moment's hesitation that on Fox NFL Sunday, when half time rolls around you won't be able to watch without hearing the phrase "Nextel Half-time Report" six times. Taking sports sponsorship one step further, over half of pro-sports stadiums are now named after sponsors, that's the perfect technique, when I hear the name Tropicana Field, I sure think baseball. Even individual games have sponsors now. If I'm a college football player I don't know if I'd be glad or not to know I was playing in the Galleryfurniture.com bowl, and yes that's a real bowl game, or if I was a NASCAR driver, to know I won the Coca-Cola 500. In the words of Conan's Pierre-Bernard, "Bottom line America", don't use do-it-yourself tumor treatments.