You’ll Probably Think I’m a Bit Obsessed with This…

 

…and you’d be right. In the last podcast, we were discussing the Super Bowl and the ads, and I noted that there was a similar hue to many of the ads, and it’s driving me nuts. Once you see it, it’s everywhere. Peter and Rob were amused by my concern, and I suppose there’s really nothing to it.

It’s just odd. It’s just damned odd. You will probably think I’m daft. But. 

This is a frame from a Verizon commercial. See the bins in the back? The chair? That’s the sort of hue we’re describing. 

Now we pull out to the house. Why are two windows sporting this color? And the door? And the reflections in the garage glass? 

It’s nothing you notice, unless maybe the commercial next is for the Air Jordan movie coming up. 

Or the Batman movie. 

Or a Benz commercial. This is supposed to take place in the pre-dawn hour. Yes, that’s just what light looks like at that time. 

The Creed movie:

Cloudstrike did an ad about a Trojan horse, and painted individual boards in the hallowed hue, as well as the logo on the horse.

Doritos starts mild, with just some clothing items . . . 

But soaks the whole set in the hue soon enough. 

Dragons and Dungeons movie:

Dr. Pepper commercial:

Farmer’s Dog, blanket, and rug:

Geico loved it a lot for this ad. Living room  . . . 

Kitchen. Glass in the cupboards – you see that a lot in realtor photos, no? No? And some light versions in the clothing . . . 

Back to the living room . . . 

…and upstairs, where the hue is on the lamp, the bathrobe, and leaking from the left. 

Will Farrell did a commercial about something.

Guardians of the Galaxy are here to save us from something, but not the hallowed hue:

Intuit will do your taxes, but make sure your mug conforms:

Steve Martin is acting! I don’t remember what the ad’s for . . . 

…but in the next shot, he has a piece of paper that’s very useful in normal life, you see that all the time. Nice that it matches the ceiling! And the computer monitor. And the little square back on the right. 

NFL commercial runs us through a mall, which of course looks like a normal place:

A trailer for the movie “Oppenheimer” looks ultra-realistic:

Priceline gives us a cheery version of the hue. Did they overdo it? Heck no! We love that color!

A company that handles your résumé starts out in an airport, which again has totally normal sunlight streaming in the window… 

Same company, where the dentist’s chair naturally matches the poster… 

Here’s Mom in a store, handing out her son’s résumé.

Sam Adams: “We want  a color that really makes you think ‘Beer!'”

Sam Adams again. I’m parched just looking at it. 

When you think Snickers, of course, this is the color that snaps instantly to mind:

Tubi is a new streaming service. It starts with this scene… 

…and then moves behind the young lady. Completely normal nighttime light. 

Tum-tum-tum-tum: Again, totally normal airport. 

Weathertech makes floor mats. We start here… 

…move to the home office, where totally natural sunlight floods the room…

…then we head to the factory floor. 

Amazon had a heart-tugging commercial about a dog, and it showed the living room.

Everyone’s ordering online at night – a warm, cozy family moment, no? 

At least there’s some sunlight here, even though the chair and lamp are — well, you know. 

Dad’s cooking! He puts on the proper-color shirt and makes sure he’s got the proper-color pot:

Later, he drives home in the rain with a dog kennel, which I’m sure can be found in this color from a variety of sellers, and the light outside is totally normal

Oreos — well, they don’t care. Here it is. Make of it what you will.

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  1. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Mark Alexander FICTION! (View Comment):

    Dystopian hues, a sameness, a subtle message of You live in a video game.

    We will be required to wear invisible t-shirts that say, “We are all different…in the same way.”

    Or it’s just post-post-modern aesthetics created in post.

    Major Frank Burns: “Individuality is fine, as long as we all do it together!”

    Monty Python:

    • #61
  2. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    I can report that the trend in floor coverings is still boring grey, boring taupe, and even more boring beige.  Yesterday we were looking at pictures of area rugs that we might want to order and my co-worker pointed out that just because I like something doesn’t mean it will sell.  Which I already knew.  I replied that I’m not saying we should order what I like, I’m just saying I like the ones that aren’t the same old thing.  But yes, I know the ones I like won’t sell.

    • #62
  3. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    • #63
  4. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    James, are you feeling blue, or is it you’re turning blue from the cold?  Just asking as a friend . . .

    • #64
  5. Ford Penney Inactive
    Ford Penney
    @FordPenney

    I might posit one response that using these colors is the ad world’s idea of calming an unsettled marketplace and people in the throes of runaway inflation. If money is being tightly held then only the most ‘true blue’ companies deserve your investment. These companies are presented as down to earth, not radical, loyal, relatable and just regular ‘folks’.
    The president has inflation on high gain, is preaching that a proxy war is a good and ‘moral’ thing to do and we all don’t know just how good we have it, “SO GET OVER IT AND APPLAUD!”

    But the real world is having no savings, inflation eating your pay check, energy cost skyrocketing, schools failing daily, illegals in numbers no one has ever imagined, no leadership and politicians who seem abjectly bored with ‘the people’ and finally no version of a bright future.

    Throw in a Chinese Spy balloon, a toxic train wreck and a government that just says ‘Don’t worry, we got this… by the way did you see our new GAY White House communications director!’ Not the confidence builder the public needs and our wallets stay closed and the purse stays zipped… but we are comforted by the color blue… or is that how we feel?

    • #65
  6. J Ro Member
    J Ro
    @JRo

    Watching TV ads. What a waste of time!

    Edit: But I get it: James is in the business because he has to make them. Or gets to make them. It can actually be enjoyable and rewarding as with other forms of creativity and he’s exceptionally skilled and insightful at it. Even I appreciate his skills at making radio ads listenable, although I’m pretty sure he’s never actually sold me anything beyond a Ricochet membership. Thanks for that!

    “The idea that business propaganda can force the consumers to submit to the will of the advertisers is spurious. Advertising can never succeed in supplanting better or cheaper goods available and offered for sale.” -Ludwig von Mises

    • #66
  7. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    By the way, if Trump were still president, none of the things we’re talking about would be any different. If Republicans held 350 seats in the House, ad agencies would still be tinkering with subtle sales cues. If Sohrab Ahmari was Commissioner of Culture, Broadway choreographers would still be gay. 

    I mention this because I often see it on the other side: the styles of my revered 1950s are invariably described as shallow, materialistic, just plain ol’ evil. Those long, tail-finned cars, women in high heels, split level suburban houses, all signs of dull conformity. But if Adlai had beaten Ike in ’52 or ’56, they’d all be remembered and praised today as signs of America’s soaring idealism and robust democracy. 

     

    • #67
  8. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    I mention this because I often see it on the other side: the styles of my revered 1950s are invariably described as shallow, materialistic, just plain ol’ evil. Those long, tail-finned cars, women in high heels, split level suburban houses, all signs of dull conformity. But if Adlai had beaten Ike in ’52 or ’56, they’d all be remembered and praised today as signs of America’s soaring idealism and robust democracy. 

    I thought split level suburban houses didn’t come until the 60s, but I never lived in any trend-setting places so who knows.

    • #68
  9. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I thought split level suburban houses didn’t come until the 60s, but I never lived in any trend-setting places so who knows.

    1950s. My dad was an architect from 1952 or so on. Some of his early designs were split level.

    • #69
  10. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    This isn’t to suggest that there isn’t a strong connection between politics and culture, of course, just that the connection is sometimes delayed or hard to pin down to one time period. Culture started getting dirty in the early to mid Fifties, but it wasn’t Ike’s fault. San Francisco went gay while Reagan was governor; nobody blames him for it. Sometimes, of course, a single dramatic event or sudden shift of popular opinion does change the culture more quickly, like Pearl Harbor, or 9/11 (though in that case it later dwindled away). In our time we have had the double whammy of #metoo in late 2017 and the George Floyd demonstrations and riots in mid-2020. 

    Of the various visual media made by pros, not TikTok accounts, TV commercials have one of the shortest lead times from conception to production to air, so they tend to be flash indicators of change, like newspapers used to be or websites are now. (By contrast, TV shows, though usually fairly current, have more of a lag time, like glossy magazines, and feature films have the longest lag time, like published books.) So commercials are where trends and fads show up fastest, and often with the most uniformity. 

    • #70
  11. Leslie Watkins Inactive
    Leslie Watkins
    @LeslieWatkins

    I was just scrolling the comment thread for the UK-based Triggernometry podcast, and virtually every photo image that commenters had posted of an ad or article had lots of this color! Including this image from long, long ago:

     


    Spooky!

    • #71
  12. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    J Ro (View Comment):

    Watching TV ads. What a waste of time!

    Edit: But I get it: James is in the business because he has to make them. Or gets to make them. It can actually be enjoyable and rewarding as with other forms of creativity and he’s exceptionally skilled and insightful at it. Even I appreciate his skills at making radio ads listenable, although I’m pretty sure he’s never actually sold me anything beyond a Ricochet membership. Thanks for that!

    “The idea that business propaganda can force the consumers to submit to the will of the advertisers is spurious. Advertising can never succeed in supplanting better or cheaper goods available and offered for sale.” -Ludwig von Mises

    I don’t think it’s a waste of time – obviously ;).  What they are trying to sell, and how they are trying to sell it, provides a lot of information about the culture. give someone a thick issue of McCall’s from 1952, and I guarantee it won’t be the articles that grab them. It’ll be the ads. 

    Mises was wrong, and his formulation was wrong. It’s not about forcing the consumers to submit to the will of the advertisers – that’s a ridiculous way of framing it. It’s about giving the consumer a series of enticements to align with the will of the advertisers for their own benefit. When there are six brands of laundry soap, all equal in price and quality, advertising sets them apart.  If there’s a cheaper one appears on the market, you might not buy it, because the  one you use has an image attached to it, an idea, something aspirational. You might not be the happy Duz housewife hanging clothes on the line with a bright smile on a spring day, but you’d like to be. That new cheap brand? The box is plain, you haven’t seen it on TV or in Life, and it seems like something Mary Parker would use. Her husband’s shop isn’t doing well, you know. I saw her at the market and she was buying cube steak.

    • #72
  13. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    I was just scrolling the comment thread for the UK-based Triggernometry podcast, and virtually every photo image that commenters had posted of an ad or article had lots of this color! Including this image from long, long ago:

     


    Spooky!

    That’s supposedly the Japanese poster. I don’t think the American posters had that image – it gives the game away. The American posters were just a long road with a glow at the end of it. 

    • #73
  14. SpencerLee Coolidge
    SpencerLee
    @SpencerLee

    @jameslileks – mystery solved…Head of Marketing for the network is a Carolina Panthers fan.  OK, far fetched theory actually but kudos to you on catching the subliminal blue wave

    • #74
  15. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    I mention this because I often see it on the other side: the styles of my revered 1950s are invariably described as shallow, materialistic, just plain ol’ evil. Those long, tail-finned cars, women in high heels, split level suburban houses, all signs of dull conformity. But if Adlai had beaten Ike in ’52 or ’56, they’d all be remembered and praised today as signs of America’s soaring idealism and robust democracy. 

    Among older progressives, maaaaybe. The younger crop, being ahistorical ninnies, has no use for the liberals of the past, because they enabled all the sins that are killing the planet. Their hatred of cars and highways and suburbs is ecumenical. 

     

    • #75
  16. W Bob Member
    W Bob
    @WBob

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Hm. Any chance the ads weren’t actually made that way, but the network did some color-shifting for airing? Because they wanted the ads to look consistent?

    These were taken from the YouTube versions of the ads, or screen grabs from my phone on streaming platforms.

    Why would they want the ads to look consistent? Advertisers want to stand out. if I plunked down six million to run an ad, and the network hue-shifted the spot to make my golden sunlight look like the color of an alien computer monitor, I’d sue.

    This is an aesthetic decision made by the individual agencies and designers. The prevalence of it suggests it’s some subconscious group-think thing, where everyone just somehow decided of course! this was was The Color, and that was that.

    I don’t want to claim any expertise, but I’ve studied a lot of commercials from a lot of eras. There are palettes that move through eras – warm earth-tones in the 70s, bright primary colors in the 80s – but those are general suisse of hues that reflect something that’s already all around us. There’s never been anything as pervasive and unnatural as this, with application to every possible emotional mood. At its worst it looks like industrial poison.

    You have to wonder if people in the industry looked at all the Super Bowl ads and noted the tonal monotony, and woke up, and next year it’s going to be anything but. My money’s on green.

    I realized one day that I tend to think of some past decades in terms of a color. I’ve never really known why the color is what it is for each decade. But for the 70s the color in my mind always seemed to be yellow or light brown or some shade close to that. Similar for the 90s. Maybe now I know why.

    • #76
  17. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    I mention this because I often see it on the other side: the styles of my revered 1950s are invariably described as shallow, materialistic, just plain ol’ evil. Those long, tail-finned cars, women in high heels, split level suburban houses, all signs of dull conformity. But if Adlai had beaten Ike in ’52 or ’56, they’d all be remembered and praised today as signs of America’s soaring idealism and robust democracy.

    I thought split level suburban houses didn’t come until the 60s, but I never lived in any trend-setting places so who knows.

    I grew up in a split level suburban home, built in 1958.

    https://ricochet.com/1083881/the-house/

    • #77
  18. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    J Ro (View Comment):

    Watching TV ads. What a waste of time!

    Edit: But I get it: James is in the business because he has to make them. Or gets to make them. It can actually be enjoyable and rewarding as with other forms of creativity and he’s exceptionally skilled and insightful at it. Even I appreciate his skills at making radio ads listenable, although I’m pretty sure he’s never actually sold me anything beyond a Ricochet membership. Thanks for that!

    “The idea that business propaganda can force the consumers to submit to the will of the advertisers is spurious. Advertising can never succeed in supplanting better or cheaper goods available and offered for sale.” -Ludwig von Mises

    I don’t think it’s a waste of time – obviously ;).  What they are trying to sell, and how they are trying to sell it, provides a lot of information about the culture. give someone a thick issue of McCall’s from 1952, and I guarantee it won’t be the articles that grab them. It’ll be the ads. 

    I have a bunch of newspapers from the day FDR died.  The ads are WAY more interesting than any of the articles in the paper.

    • #78
  19. AnaxagorasAginusorforus Inactive
    AnaxagorasAginusorforus
    @AnaxagorasAginusorforus

    WAKE UP!! Perhaps this has to do with attempting to counteract the popular “blue blocking glasses” and “night mode” on computers where the colors of the display shift to the warmer end of the spectrum.  The theory is that less blue light helps you sleep better so I suppose advertisers would want to wake up viewers and to do that they add more blue.

    On the conspiracy end we have those that believe too much blue light can cause retinal damage and macular degeneration, but I don’t think advertisers want us to go blind else how can we watch their ads?

    • #79
  20. Goddess of Discord Member
    Goddess of Discord
    @GoddessofDiscord

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    It’s groupthink, it’s fashionability, but it’s also something that’s come up before in Ricochet analysis: things like car designs (for example) tend towards becoming standardized as fewer and fewer new shapes are found that get great results in the wind tunnel.

    In this case, consistent consumer preference for certain colors on TV has narrowed things down to the point where even the sameness is looking the same. The metaphorical algorithm of color is working as designed and it’s making everything boring.

    At a certain point, ad agencies will break things up, and once again find eye-catching new combinations of shades. In eighteen months, that becomes the new style, and in another eighteen months, a conformist cliche. Then the cycle starts again.

    It depends on how they gauge consumer preferences. What people say they like and what works might not be the same thing.

    This stuff really works. There’s a store in Dallas called Boot Town where I could have given you details for years after I left there.

    When I place my finger on the video as if to copy and paste, it is highlighted in the same blue! What is the world coming to????

    • #80
  21. Gian Tricarico Coolidge
    Gian Tricarico
    @GianTricarico

    Reminds me of this music video.

    • #81
  22. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    When I first saw color TVs I was surprised that the background on news programs was blue.  Blue is a great color but I always wondered why they all chose that particular shade of blue.

    • #82
  23. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    The Detroit Fifties sported some righteous two and even three tone paint jobs, but most of the chosen colors were sensibly bland.  There’s always been resale value to worry about. The Seventies, like today, liked to think of themselves as cultural innovators, but they also had their fashionable groupthink color palettes. As mentioned in earlier comments, “organic” tones of saturated color were popular in cars–greens, brown, bronze, gold, orange, yellow, lime, grape. Despite occasional brief later waves of bold car colors, the Seventies still take the prize. 

    TV graphic design turned out like it did because of prevailing tastes, but also to some degree because of mild to moderate tech limits in terms of brightness and color saturation. Various shades of television blue were not only attractive but easy to handle on the set of live TV, where for decades men wore light blue shirts because white ones were too intensely reflective. “Ordinary” (pre-HDTV) TV didn’t reproduce vivid red very well, so shades for live TV cameras were usually a reddish-orange tending towards copper-red. That became “TV red”. 

    For anyone around in the fifties through the seventies, TV delivery panel trucks were often decorated in blocks of color, as cable TV installer’s trucks would be later. 

    • #83
  24. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    “Ordinary” (pre-HDTV) TV didn’t reproduce vivid red very well, so shades for live TV cameras were usually a reddish-orange tending towards copper-red. That became “TV red”. 

    Has that really been fixed now?  It wasn’t so long ago when it was painful to watch University of Illinois basketball on TV when the coach and people in the crowd were decked out in bright orange.   I don’t remember the U of Wisconsin or Ohio State causing quite the same problem.  (I used to help my wife watch Big Ten games on TV. Still do, sometimes.  Seems I even watched a few minutes of Illinois on TV this season, but maybe it was last year.) 

    • #84
  25. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    “Ordinary” (pre-HDTV) TV didn’t reproduce vivid red very well, so shades for live TV cameras were usually a reddish-orange tending towards copper-red. That became “TV red”.

    Has that really been fixed now? It wasn’t so long ago when it was painful to watch University of Illinois basketball on TV when the coach and people in the crowd were decked out in bright orange. I don’t remember the U of Wisconsin or Ohio State causing quite the same problem. (I used to help my wife watch Big Ten games on TV. Still do, sometimes. Seems I even watched a few minutes of Illinois on TV this season, but maybe it was last year.)

    It’s still painful when Dain Dainja or Matthew Mayer aren’t on the court.

    Sometimes it’s painful when they are, too.

    • #85
  26. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    The Detroit Fifties sported some righteous two and even three tone paint jobs, but most of the chosen colors were sensibly bland. 

    It was probably in 1955 that I ran into the house to report on the amazing scene that had passed by, headed north . The car was not just a two-tone, but had three (Three!) colors.  And it was not just an ordinary car, but a Station Wagon!  And it was pulling a Travel Trailer!  To me it looked like one amazing luxury on top of another.

    (The house is gone now, but the usual traffic then was about the same as is now seen on this Google StreetView.)

    • #86
  27. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Blue everywhere – Red and then maybe in the background – subliminal conditioning to the election season?? Very good eye and no, it doesn’t look natural -!

    • #87
  28. psmith Inactive
    psmith
    @psmith

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    How very odd.

    I think I went and played spike ball with the little cousins during the commercials, so I missed it. (Probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, since I completely lack an aesthetic sense.)

    Whatever does it mean, do you think? And does it have anything to do with the balloons we’ve been shooting down? I think it must.

    I don’t think there’s any intention, other than trying to be au courant.

    Except that it’s not, really. This color had a vogue a few years ago in movie posters, usually paired with orange or yellow. But I just realized that it reminds me of the craze for Bondi Blue, the color of the first iMac in 1998.

    It’s possible the ad designers are channeling a childhood hue.

    I always loved turquoise and pink, but that was probably due to the boomerang-patterned Formica in our kitchen: nostalgia, innocent years, happiness, all that.

    Maybe that’s it. Subconscious retro attachment. So many manifestations in the modern ads look unsettling and toxic, but might that be a generational difference? The boomers read it one way, the 30-somethings another way entirely.

    We had a real estate agent, Vera, come through and report on the highest-return upgrades that we could make, in order to turn the old place into a hot ticket–the gearest property out there, the cat’s pajamas–if we decided to sell into the current market.

    Vera said that the boomerang-patterned turquoise and pink Formica in the kitchen was the first thing that had to go.

    I was bemused. (Remember: That word means “confused“. I do not think that word means what you think it means until you stop and try to remember what we both discovered that it does mean, back in 2009 or so.)

    “Why?” I inquired, bemused.

    “It is a bit dated”, Vera replied. Kate said nothing. She just gave me that “What have I been saying since we moved in, Camper?” look.

    And if you wait, dated becomes retro.

    • #88
  29. SpencerLee Coolidge
    SpencerLee
    @SpencerLee

    Percival (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    “Ordinary” (pre-HDTV) TV didn’t reproduce vivid red very well, so shades for live TV cameras were usually a reddish-orange tending towards copper-red. That became “TV red”.

    Has that really been fixed now? It wasn’t so long ago when it was painful to watch University of Illinois basketball on TV when the coach and people in the crowd were decked out in bright orange. I don’t remember the U of Wisconsin or Ohio State causing quite the same problem. (I used to help my wife watch Big Ten games on TV. Still do, sometimes. Seems I even watched a few minutes of Illinois on TV this season, but maybe it was last year.)

    It’s still painful when Dain Dainja or Matthew Mayer aren’t on the court.

    Sometimes it’s painful when they are, too.

    I think the orange issue has been fixed.  U of Illinois’ version of orange is pretty much the same as Auburn’s and it shows up perfectly on screen when the crowd goes all orange.  The football can be unwatchable at times but the colors are in good shape.

    • #89
  30. Hugh Member
    Hugh
    @Hugh

    Well darn. (kick wastepaper basket)  Now I wish I hadn’t used that color for the trim on my house.

    • #90
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