Mail Day, part 2: Ad nauseum
One of the things you forget about when you don't read the dead tree Mail* is the adverts. Online, they're fairly generic big-brand stuff. But in print... well, let's just say they're aiming at a rather specific demographic. And if it's indicative of the Mail's paper readership, you have to wonder how much longer they're going to be around for. Beautiful ads, though, which I'm delighted to share with you.
I mean, who wouldn't want that? Marvellous scenes. "I want a mobile phone please, but wait, my sausagey fingers keep pressing two buttons at once. I want to make it absolutely impossible to do it. Big buttons, you say? Oh, I'm talking about fucking big buttons. Bigger than Scrabble tiles! Bigger than carpet tiles! I want buttons so fucking big, you can't get the fucking phone through a doorway! Can you do that? Well, can you?"
I love the way the ad promises BIG buttons, with capital letters, as if the photo wasn't enough to convince you of their bigness. And I think, in a way, it might give us a clue as to the readers who are flicking through these pages. Sure, they kind of know there are things called mobile phones. But they're so fiddly and modern, aren't they? What's wrong with just massive buttons, a big green thing to answer and a big red thing to cancel? Nothing at all, and for the bargain price of just £79.95 plus postage and packaging - yes, you read that right - you can 'go back to basics'. Perfect. I might order me a dozen.
It's funny the things that make you laugh. For some reason I collapsed into uncontrollable hysterics for about two minutes after seeing the phrase "fumble-proof alarm off switch". Wonderful! It's still making me chuckle away as I type this. This is a product designed for people who are fed up with fumbling! "I want an alarm clock please, with easy-to-read numbers and I don't want to fucking fumble for it any more!" I love so much about this. I love the fact it scarily glows in the dark. I love the way it tells you the temperature. I love the way in which they ask you to consider buying two, one for either side of the bed. So you can have fumble-free button-pushing to your left and right. I love it all. I'm getting one! Again, you could say it might give us some clues as to the readership - people whose biggest worry in life is fumbling for an alarm off switch, who want to be reassured by a large fluorescent thing in the night, who might treat themselves to two - why not? Why not indeed.
If you're a woman and your nan reads the Mail, you'd better hope you get one of these for your next birthday - or even as a Christmas treat. If you don't, what does that say about her? She's too tight to fork out £80 for her own bloody granddaughter? The bitch. There are four easy payments and it looks like a big present, for fuck's sake. What more do you want? Put her in a really shit home if she doesn't get you one.
"Browse. Buy. Enjoy." says the Mail Life slogan. And I can certainly see how you'd enjoy a life free of dampness. (And no, I'm not going there. You've already gone there and thought that already, vis-a-vis dampness and elderly readers, so I'm not going to. You mucky so-and-sos. Honestly. In the gutter.) But look, I'm not selling this to you properly. You buy one, you get one free. Not just one dampness problem solved, but two! Beat that! Go on, beat it! What's that you say? You could beat it, quite easily, by just popping down to B&Q? Well shhhh. No-one likes a smartarse.
So there you have it. I think there's a limited insight that you get to the demographic of dead tree Mail readers, as opposed to their online counterparts. They're people who want mobile phones with massive fucking buttons, who want a fumble-free off switch for their alarm clocks, who have dampness issues around the house, and who would, if they could, buy a lovely present, shaped like a present but made of precious things, for their granddaughters.
And that's just the adverts. What we'll learn from the stories we'll find out shortly.
* Incidentally, I should at this point offer props to Five Chinese Crackers, who did the original 'wonders of the dead tree Mail' post way back in 2007, before I'd even started this blog. In many ways it was reading 5cc's posts back then which got me into blogging in the first place. So you've got him to thank / slap around the face.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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March 18th, 2010 - 13:29
Surely the glow in the dark clock is mildly radioactive. Might it not give you cancer?
March 18th, 2010 - 13:52
I love the thermometer on the fumble-free clock. As if the average buyer would need anything more precise than an arrow that pointed either to the word ‘Sweltering’ or ‘Bitter’.
March 18th, 2010 - 14:33
I’m ashamed to say I might be tempted by the giant button phone – if it has useful (y’know normal) features like a camera and a radio. The radio active clock looks like something my grandmother owned – and the glow in the dark face was actually radio active, if I remember right. The adverts – the best thing about the Mail – which shows how bad it really is.
March 18th, 2010 - 14:40
My dad, the Mail reader, just bought one of those phones. He’s old and has trouble pushing buttons. Probably has difficulty with the buttons on his alarm clock, come to that. He also put off getting digital TV until it was forced on him because more than five channels was “too complicated”.
But there you go: Mail readers are going to die off soon. Does anyone under 40 bother with it in a non-ironic way?
March 18th, 2010 - 14:46
In fairness, the giant phone looks quite quite a useful piece of kit for people with poor fine motor control. I pity any beloved granddaughter who gets one of those necklaces and has to wear it every time she goes to visit Grandma, mind you.
March 18th, 2010 - 16:21
Not just people with fine motor control problems. My wife’s legally blind, and she’d love a phone like that…(not for that price though…)
June 15th, 2012 - 11:09
“Legally Blind” ? What a delightfully original combination of two words! The implication that immediately sprang to my mind was the unfortunate status of any individual that might be categorized as “illegally blind” – which – when you think about it – raises some highly entertaining hypotheses as to the ethics of such a typology – not to mention how one first found oneself “illegally blind” in the first place – and how one should actually go about coping with the inevitable awkward life scenarios of being “illegally blind” – for example engaging in small talk at a friends dinner party or when applying to the local council for a grant for extra roof insulation or some such. Fantastic.
March 18th, 2010 - 14:53
Hilarious but somehow indicative not only of the DM demographic (45+), but also of of the attitudes. These are all things that reflect the need of the Daily Mail reader for a gentler, apparently less complicated yworld. If they had mobiles in the 50s that’s what they would look like. None of this iPhone nonsense for me – I want the large button, “my-first-mobile-phone” b FisherPrice thing. These people actively want to live in the past, they are choosing to stay fusty, sometimes it’s like they enjoy being scared of new things, new technology (Facebook anyone?). Yet, if you sent them to the dentist and said – none of that modern anesthetic nonsense – here is a glass of brandy to steady your nerves they’d have a full on tantrum with the ‘this is 21st century’ line of argument
Another interesting thing is, they are charging £79.99 plus p&p when you can get it on Amazon for £45 free delivery so DM actively facilitates their elderly readers to be ripped off.
Amazing….
April 22nd, 2010 - 00:40
“I love the way in which they ask you to consider buying two, one for either side of the bed. So you can have fumble-free button-pushing to your left and right. I love it all. I’m getting one! ”
Shouldn’t you be getting two?
March 18th, 2010 - 16:54
I may be way off beam here, so if you’re of a scientific bent please correct me. If you’re using a dehumidifier (for £24.99) which you then plug in to a wall socket to dry it out (costing you whatever the electricity supplier feels like charging this week), then aren’t you rehumidifying your house each recharge? At your own expense?
Sounds like exactly the sort of logic Mail readers are most comfortable with. The sort that doesn’t work, if thought about for more than two seconds. These people really have their target market defined, you’ve got to admit.
September 5th, 2010 - 19:54
Hang on, a phone which stores 200 numbers yet markets itself on big fucking buttons. Says it all.
April 28th, 2011 - 14:12
Dunno about the mobile – my dad’s 76, starting to get a bit dodgy with his eyes…but (sheesh) he’s Jamaican – and has lived in the UK for 54 years. ¿Will they take una negro pound?