A few years ago there was a dinner party conversation topic that came up again and again — how the hell could people love Mo the Meerkat?
My friends and I would lambaste how ridiculous and creepy he was. We were all in agreement that he wasn’t clever or funny or cute. Of course, all of us were in media and advertising.
Media types like to believe themselves the arbiters of good taste, perhaps even intellectually superior to the rabble.
Sometimes it’s our way of making up for a negative bank balance. That accountant friend might earn ten times what we do, but he believes John Grisham is literature and thinks Foucault is a macaroon.
And sometimes we have simply seen too much to be easily amused. In our ebony and ivory towers of ideas and words, we mock those who read YOU Magazine and listen to Celine Dion, all the while grudgingly acknowledging that they are the majority.
They love Mo. They think the talking dog in the Toyota ads is adorable. Their favourite local band is the Parlotones. Their favourite books are Eat. Pray. Love. and The Da Vinci Code. They truly believe Discovery offers the best value for a medical aid. They are blinded by perks and saccharine.
And you know what? We need them. They are the consumers an advertiser dreams about, these Meerkat People. God help them, they trust us. Find the right little hook and they will be loyal to your brand until the end.
I used to fight this assertion with a passionate plea to clients (to quote David Ogilvy), “the consumer isn’t a moron, she’s your wife”.
But after years of seeing this consumer’s enthusiastic response to dumb advertising, I’ve come to accept that the wife probably is a moron, or at least has poor taste. Why else would so much crap be cooed over by those with disposable incomes?
And before someone says these Meerkat People are being taken advantage of by evil advertisers, I can assure you that they’re not. All the information is there, they would just rather absorb a marketing message packaged in an anthropomorphised animal than do any research.
Call me a snob if you like, but it’s more arrogant erudition than affectation. Years of dealing with Meerkat People will do that.
Now excuse me while I mourn the loss of my idealistic belief in the rationality of human beings. I’ll be sitting in a coffee shop, reading Waiting for Godot.
The question that vexes me is WHO ARE THE MEERKAT PEOPLE? No one admits to loving Dan Brown, the meerket or the Parlotones, yet they’re all massively successful. Obviously a lot of people keep their vices secret.
And no-one admits to reading You Magazine – they only buy it for the crosswords.
It’s a pity that i thought Mo was funny and the Parlotones was one of the only rock bands I could tolerate next to U2, and I thought the Da Vinci Code wasn’t fiction. I mean, one of those Jesus’ disciples is a woman for heavens’ sake and thats Maria who is Jesus’ baby momma. I don’t think Jesus was a virgin. He couldn’t have been that uncool, could he?
Oh come! If ethics in advertising still exist, you must still be expected to use your clients’ products, else why would they hand out so many free samples to their agencies?
So it’s my guess that you drive a Toyota, have a Parlotones CD in your bedroom and have read the Da Vinci Code. Your agency probably also has a contract with Discovery and you pay extra for Vitality because it’s good to be seen at Virgin A.
As for Mo the meerkat, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or what he might have been supposed to be promoting.
How’s that for memorable advertising?
This article made my self-indulgent media-type tummy fuzzy inside. Thank you *sipping coffee while searching for Waiting for Godot on kalahari…”
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” – Bertrand Russell
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein
I think the answer to your question lies in the differentiation between specialisation and generalisation. Many people are specialists or have specialist knowledge in a certain field. Yours is marketing and possibly the human psyche, while research is part of your job. As a result you read “War and Peace” and “Ulysses” and lament the lack of consumer education and their wilful ignorance. But you don’t spend all your time reading about Ahab…… whether it is Dan Brown, “The Secret” something else, you have your guilty pleasure. And you possibly share that guilty pleasure with several Actuaries and Engineers who lament the lack of scientific literacy in society.
Misters Brown and Mo are not modern masterpieces and I think most people who enjoy them know this. I have almost accepted ignorance a baseline expectation, but I hope that at least people are aware of their ignorance and not pound of it. In the US they have an aggressive, proudly ignorant part of society – hopefully we don’t ever reach that point.
Mo is a symptom of the absense of critical reasoning among South Africans. “Why go so deep into things? Just relax! Ubuntu! Monate haholo!” It is our ability for higher thinking that contributes to our humanity. If we do not know why we like or dislike anything, what are we? Sheep?
Mo must go!
ditto to MLH