Dharma-Burger! …Karma Police, arrest this ad.
So. Here’s SoyJoy’s current print
ad:
…I may or may not be the “target market,” but I’m not a fan.
Why? Well, not so much because of its appropriation of “karma.” God knows there’s been plenty of those, and there probably always will be. (Here are some recent ones: 1, 2, 3.) In fact, it could even be argued (key word: argued) that it is karmically “better” to eat soy than, say, something that requires the creation of more suffering in the farm-to-plate process.
It’s just that using the karma-as-benefit ploy in advertising is so lazy, so tired. How many times can anyone, no matter how mindful, hear the same note played without it just becoming background noise? I mean, come on: a competitor of the Soyjoy snack bar was actually called Karma. (You can see it here if you just scroll about a third of the page down.) Guess it wasn’t “good” enough.
But seriously, what — aside from a bizarro monkey/blueberry/angel hybrid wearing a fez (which is kinda awesome) — does this ad have going for it? To paraphrase Megadeth, if karma sells, who, exactly, is buying?
And while we’re at it: Hey, advertising-dudes, can you stop it with ads like these, too?:
You run these types of ads incessantly, because you think you’ve got your key demographics all figured out. Suddenly, everyone’s a whore for “balance.”
But what comes around goes around, and consumers will become more conscious and figure you out soon enough.
Go ahead and chalk it up to karma.
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August 25th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Not exactly surprising, though, is it? I was raised a Quaker–a sect known to a few for its history of non-violence, opposition to racism and war, etc.–but known to far more for that guy on the Quaker Oats box, leading to my being asked all my life if my family travels in a horse-and-buggy. Quakers didn’t actually start complaining, though, until the Quaker Oats company decided to make its mascot into Quakerman, a violent superhero. Can Karmaman or Yogaman be far behind?
August 25th, 2008 at 10:28 am
I’m lucky enough as a graphic designer to not be put into a situation(yet) where I had to do any mainstream advertisement. For now I handle a much smaller internal technology/enterprise demographic.
A few other non Buddhist but culturally aware designers that I know have to deal with this sort of thing a lot.
If you were to look into the most used stock photos over the last few years you’d see a lot of that scenario exactly.
Usually a depiction of some seemingly well off and fit woman with her hair up, in a meditative position, with a very content look on her face.
Over the last few years I’ve had mixed emotions about that sort of image and how it reflects the culture of dharma.
In some aspects I think it’s very endearing for it to be viewed as tranquil and somewhat mystical practice.
On the other hand though, as YogaforCynics’s example; marketing like this can seriously skew the outside view and integrity of cultures. I love where I am spiritually but lately I’m finding it a bit of an undertaking to explain to people that I meditate and chant mantras without them generalizing me as a granola eating hippie.
I like red meat, I don’t know any martial arts, and no that’s not a sailor’s wheel tattoo’d on my arm.