My Life as a Promo Girl
By Lara Karuna

Have you ever noticed a group of guys all casually drinking the same brand of alcohol at a bar? Have you ever had a hot girl offer you a free drink, and when she gave it to you it was only a _ of an ounce shot (legal amount of alcohol you can give away for free in California)? Have you ever woken up, hung over, and found a sticky Polaroid of you and some random girl in a Bud Light tank top? If so, then you’ve been “promo’d”

I have worked every kind of promo you can think of in Los Angeles. If you have a Polaroid from a drunken night in an L.A. bar, there’s a good chance that random girl might be me. I’ve been a spoon and a zombie; I’ve worn red wigs and passed out numerous glow sticks and key chains. I’ve been smacked on the ass (and in turn had to smack him in the face), and I have used an obscene amount of Polaroid film on myself. It has been somewhat profitable, but more than anything else, it’s been educational. I have seen first hand the incredible ways brands are introduced and fed to us, encouraging us to shut up and consume!

In the pursuit of profit, companies go to hilarious extremes to sell their product.

They come up with things like brand “personalities.” Yes! They anthropomorphize their products- inanimate objects become “urbane” and “sultry.” Smirnoff Vodka might be “sexy, light-hearted and witty” while Bud Light could be, “fun, hard working and an easy lay.” And when you find yourself kneeling over the dirty toilet of your local club then your drink of choice becomes: “bitchy, selfish with a bad temper.” They also stage “covert marketing strategies;” for example, I’ve been hired to stand around drinking a particular brand instructed only to talk to “cool” people. I have had trainers (yes! we get trained) literally say,
Ignore the wanna-be’s. It’s okay to be a snob, that’s what our drink is.

Often we’re given scripts in which we must act out our interaction with consumers. It usually goes something like:

“Hey, you wanna get Wet?”

“Stop being naughty! I don’t mean THAT kind of wet; I’m talking about this great new drink called Wet. It’s really swell, everyone’s trying it, you want a sample?”

In advertising, no whim, no want, no desire or insecurity is left unexploited. If, while you pee, they can grab a moment of your attention to slip their brand through, they will. They have a “Decision Making Corridor,” the place where people order drinks- notice all the neon Bud signs behind the rows of alcohol?
They hire beautiful (well, sometimes a little above average- but hey, you’re drunk) girls to come and smile and take pictures with you for a half hour, hoping that that exchange will leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling not only for the girl who gave you all that attention, but the brand that sponsored the whole exchange. They hire guys to sit around and look cool drinking what is deemed a “girlie” drink (kiss of death in the alcohol world) in the hopes that we, being the lambs they have decided we are, will now decide the drink is manly.

Marketing dictates our culture. Through advertising, what was once unacceptable becomes acceptable from bell-bottom pants to monopolies. Why do you think the Bush administration hired Charlotte Beers a marketing whiz and Rendon, a top PR Firm, to market the war in Iraq! It works! And it happens subtly. The most affective advertising is the kind that you don’t consciously remember. You see the logo somewhere, remember you’ve heard about it, figure a friend endorsed it and they have you. I’m not saying it’s all bad, in fact I am going to apply those same strategies to marketing this web site! I just think we need to be aware of what our phenomenal minds are exposed to on a daily basis, of the diminishing amount of free space that surrounds us. Parks, freeways, supermarkets (many of which now have TV commercials at the checkout stand), buses, bathrooms, bars, etc… all are plastered with ads. Don’t you think we deserve to have a break from bad breath and flabby abs? All day long we are pullied through the world on a perpetual roller coaster of cravings and inadequacy

MMMM Big Mac and buy the new ab-roller- you fat ass!

Advertising gives us the Internet, the TV, and the radio. But, as your grandfather said, “There’s no such thing as a free ride.” Let’s be aware of our price and learn how to spot the free space.