Day 319: I Am Current-ly Ad Nauseous

Remember the pandemic? That was fun. Back when public advertisements didn’t change. For the people that couldn’t have the privilege of working at home, every day felt the same. For the people who spent 9 months not riding the train, they were tickled to see the same ol’ ads from the Before Times. To them, it was a post-apocalyptic cream dream. “Hah, that show came out last February and it’s already cancelled!” “Well, that show’s not on Broadway anymore!” “Buying a condo in Jersey City? In this economy?!?” “Heh, it’s funny because Barnes is dead. I love outdated New York!” Well, the fun is over. Now that the normies are leaving their house again, advertising companies have gotten off their lazy asses to sell stuff to them. While most of the new ads innocuously blend in, one in particular made me outwardly baffled:

Luckily, the ad doesn’t say much, so we have less to unpack here. First off, let’s break down the phrase, “You don’t have to talk to us through security glass”. It hasn’t really been established who “us” is, but let’s make a couple of assumptions:

• If “us” is referring to the physical ad itself, then it is a false statement. The ad is actually encased in a security glass. Even though you probably don’t have to talk to a print ad like it implies, if you did, you would literally have to do it through security glass.
• If “us” is referring to a phone application that I believe is being advertised, then it is a false statement. What exactly do they think a phone screen is made out of? It’s most definitely glass. And it’s a security glass, because phone makers don’t believe it’s safe to run out fingers over what’s behind the glass. Also, some people use glass screen protectors. In their case, they would have to talk to them through two layers of security glass. So that makes the statement double wrong.

They then go on to ask, “What do you think we are, a bank?” Well…are you? You literally have not told us what you are! This ad does nothing to explain what Current actually is. All that we know is that the Ad Men are liars, it is allegedly not a bank, you can sign up in two minutes, it was designed in New York (as if that matters) and the app shows pretty graphs. So I guess I have to go out of my way to figure out what Current is:

Current is a mobile banking app and Visa debit card that gets you paid up to two days faster with fee-free overdraft up to $100 and no hidden fees…

Okay, what the fuck. So it’s a banking app, but not a bank? It sounds to me like it’s a goddamn bank! Also, I would never trust a bank that I could sign up for in 2 minutes. I’m gonna need a lot more security than that! 2 minutes is hardly enough time to set up a bank account or even a Visa card. I can’t even come up with security question answers in 2 minutes. It’s not that I don’t know the answers to the questions, I just have to figure out a way to word the answer that would be consistent with how I would answer when i frantically lost my password. Do I capitalize Pontiac? Was that my actual first pet? Was the teacher a Ms or Mrs? This is taking way longer than 2 minutes.

All that aside, this is one of the worst ads I’ve seen because it says nothing about lies about the product. This is as if Seamless had an add that said, “You don’t have to order from a menu. What do you think we are, a food delivery service?”. That’s like Netflix saying, “You don’t need to own a TV. What do you think we are, a media streaming service?” That’s like a contest saying, “No purchase necessary”, even though you need to buy the product to enter the contest. I’m aware that the Ad World is full of deceit and lies, but this one has really gone too far.

Join me next time when I try to decipher why showing people riding a bike is used to sell luxury sedans!

– TeeCoZee