Graphic Reality - A Marketing Trend?

Federal regulators are going graphic on the nation's puffers.

Maybe you saw the new warning labels the Food and Drug Administration wants to slap on packs of cigarettes. There are cancer victims, corpses and diseased lungs.

The point is to show us what these products actually will do. It's a dose of marketplace reality. I like it, and not because I want to scare smokers. I hope it sparks a trend.

The more graphic, reality-based labels we get, the better.

For example, when I walk through Sears and see a treadmill, I want to see a label hanging from it that shows the machine covered with dust and buried in laundry.

I don't want to see a picture of some slim, neat dandy wearing a pair of khakis. I want a tag that shows what they look like on a guy who's 20 pounds overweight, who has been sitting around in them all day. Throw on a blob of mustard and some coffee. Now I know what they'll look like on me.

Don't show me “The world's most interesting man” sipping Dos Equis. Show me the world's least interesting man chugging it at Casa del Taco happy hour. Nacho cheese on his nose. That's reality. Same with Corona. Find your beach? More like find your feet after another chimi platter.

Car companies show rugged SUVs plowing through deep snow. But I've seen many more SUVs stuck in the median, having ruggedly spun clean off an icy interstate. Show us that.

Look at all those young, carefree people laughing it up over that delicious food at Happlebees or some other “neighborhood” chain. Where are the tired, sullen parents, choking down salty, over-sauced schlock while their kids fight over crayons and crawl under the table? Where's the guy shaking his head and holding his gut while he pays the fat bill? Put a few of those photos on the front of the menu, why don't you?

Heck, label the holidays. Thanksgiving? Let's check the label. I see a guy snoring in a recliner in front of a lousy football game, while some people in the background yell at each other about Sarah Palin. Perfect. Christmas? A crying, chocolate-smeared little face, with a clock behind her showing 8 a.m., while someone digs in the junk drawer for flippin' C batteries. A million AAAs but no Cs?

Include political ads. I don't want to see a candidate walking down a country road in a flannel shirt, promising to “fight hard for you.” Let's see a few minutes of him in the back of a campaign van with a cell phone, desperately begging donors for money. “I'll fight especially hard for you.”

Join me in a quest for graphic reality. But I feel obliged to tell you, up front, you'll be disappointed.

Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@sourcemedia.com