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[wynot]

10:26 PM EST, watching the history channel show about the universe, they just had a commercial for scientology.org.

I only caught the last seconds; it appeared to be a slick production. I think it was only 30 seconds.

I don't guess they (THC) can refuse ads, so long as they aren't really nasty or dirty... Shame...

'til later;
wynot

[Ultrapoet]

If they're advertising, that means they need fresh meat.  Badly.  This is, in an odd way, a positive sign.

Can't wait to see the parodies that Anonymous will be making of the commercials.

[wynot]

Actually, they have been using TV adverts for decades - but not in primetime very much. Fortunately, their ads are so general/ic, and devoid of meaningful content as to have little impact on their numbers, I think. And if this new one funnels the curious-minded to their site - well, their site is hard to make fun of, because it is so stupid all on its own... 

'til later;
wynot

[Raven]

To my knowledge commercials are are sold in  2 ways on TV.   The first way and most expensive is calling the commercial. As in other words a customer would say I want this show at this time.  However, most networks offer a fill in rate.  You would tell say ABC I have a $1000.00 and want the add dropped into any show with this demographic in spots no one called, but the space would be sold at a discounted rate, because lets be honest TV stations want some $$ and no empty air waves.  The commercial could run at any time of day, but under to a certain demographic.The customer would demand X amount of commercials for X dollars.  In other words that 1000.00 must buy 10 or 20 commercials. 

I hope that made sense.  I can explain this way better in person

[FYIANON]

The commercials are running on cnn.  I've yet to seem them, and don't want to go hunt them down on yt and give them views. I keep hearing the are incredilby creepy


http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10002624/church-of-scientology-runs-commercials-on-cnn/


Church of Scientology Runs Commercials on CNN

                         The Church of Scientology has launched an ad campaign on CNN, according to Gawker.
The ad shows a bunch of white and Asian people lost in the anomie of everyday life — looking out of the window during a school exam, surrounded by a crowd at Grand Central in New York — as a thoughful voiceover intones: We’re all looking for it … that unexplainable emptiness that can only be filled with one thing … the truth. The ad will be examined closely in the agency business, which has its own connections to Scientology. Most prominently, former Leo Burnett chairman/chief creative officer Cheryl Berman was well-known as a Scientologist (and the subject of a large number of wacky web-based rumors.) Berman left the shop in 2006.
Gawker thinks the ad is “deeply creepy” and looks like an Effexor ad.
Writing personally, the most annoying thing about it is the scene where a man walks through a library, dragging his hands along a set of bookcases. “Some of us have been looking our whole lives,” the voiceover says. The implication of the imagery is that answers cannot be found in books, which are all the same. As such, the ads fuel that strong, strange strain in American culture which regards edukashun — facts generally and science specifically — with suspicion.
Other nations — notably the Chinese — don’t have these delusions. And they will become our bosses in about 30 years unless Americans become less delusional about books and facts.                                       

[FYIANON]

original gawker article is here: http://gawker.com/5292588/scientology-hates-psychiatry-loves-its-ads


Sorry I'm failing at posting today guys lol

[ethercat]

The commercials are running on cnn.  I've yet to seem them, and don't want to go hunt them down on yt and give them views. I keep hearing the are incredilby creepy

If you don't log into YouTube when you watch, it doesn't add to the view counts.  So watch all you can stand - just don't log in to do it.

[mefree]

I have to agree with xenubarb's comment on this one.

[Stutroup]

Well, here's a bit of good news ont eh subject, and in the news which makes it even better!

(full article below)

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/scientology-media-blitz-to-counter-critics-seems-counter-productive/

Scientology Media Blitz to Counter Critics Seems Counter-Productive
#  By Ryan Singel # June 17, 2009 # 4:44 pm

The Church of Scientology is in the midst of a multi-million dollar media campaign that includes running ads on news sites, satellite dish networks, 37 cable stations, and even Wired.com — a blitz that seems to have not so much won new friends or influenced people as stir up more animosity towards the group many consider nothing more than a greedy cult.

A typical video: “You are not your name. You are not your job. [...] You are not your fears. You are hope. [...] You are a spirit that will never die. [...] Scientology. Know yourself. Know life.”

A typical reaction: “Just saw a commercial for scientology. seriously? it claimed truth. i pray that nobody buys into that lie,” wrote HannaSheeps on Monday via Twitter.

That reception is to be expected given the internet and Scientology are still fighting what might be the net’s longest running flame war, dating back to the early days of alt.religion.scientology news group. That bitter fight led to lawsuits, raids by the feds and criminal prosecutions of church critics. The criticism of the church has been the same for more than 15 years — that it’s a cult which charges believers thousands of dollars for trainings and uses strong-arm tactics to keep members and critics in line. The church’s line hasn’t changed either — we are misunderstood and we will use the law to silence critics.

The Hatfields to the church’s McCoys are itself a cultish group of loosely-organized hackers known as Anonymous, which “declared war” in January 2008 after the secretive religious group tried to suppress a creepy Tom Cruise video produced for Scientology members. After that incident the leaderless group organized online attacks, leaks of embarrassing internal church doctrine documents and protests outside of Scientology buildings around the country.

A month ago a teen Anonymous member pleaded guilty in federal court to a computer hacking charge for his role in distributed denial-of-service attack that last year shuttered Church of Scientology websites. Two weeks ago Wikipedia banned the church from editing any articles.

Mostly, media just stay away from the story or generally cast the organization in a bad light. Enter public relations and a checkbook. In what Church of Scientology spokesman Ingo Lehmann told wired.com was a reaction at least in part to the Anonymous campaigns, the church began a campaign of TV commercials and Flash ads on May 17 designed to lure eyeballs to scientology.org, where there are hundreds of videos and testimonials (though they don’t say really much about the Church’s teachings). It plans to keep running ads through the end of the year. Interested viewers can go see the ads for themselves at http://thescientologyvideo.blogspot.com.

Disconnect seems to play a big part in all of this: Lehmann sent out the Twitter screenshot in this article along with a press release about the campaign. He described the Tweeters as surprised. A better description might be that every Tweet in the screenshot was either offended or cynical.

Our own experience was similar. Readers in Belgium and the UK tweeted us about scientology ads they saw on Wired.com last week and we responded that we had sold no ads to the church.

On Wednesday, Condé Nast Executive Director Josh Stinchcomb clarified that some Wired.com ads are sold through Google Adsense. The company does not comment on what advertisers appear on the site through that program, though this was apparently the source of the Scientology ads on Wired.com. Wired.com reserves the right to refuse to serve ads from Google Adsense buyers based on reader feedback, among other things.

“We do not publicly comment on which advertisers we allow or disallow, but do appreciate the comments from our readers and have reacted accordingly,” Stinchcomb said in a statement.

The money flowing from Scientology into the economy may turn out to be the most productive thing to ever emerge from 4Chan, the infamous online image sharing site where internet memes like Lolcats are born and Anonymous members hang out while contemplating new, online mischief. Anonymous members who protest Scientology say they should not be confused with the bored denizens of image boards, and that their crusade against Scientology is born out of principles and concern for people they say the Church has brainwashed. The most recent noises target the Church’s upper echelon, Sea Org, which members pledge to join for a billion years.

Not surprisingly, Lehmann disagrees about their motives.

“Some people just don’t have anything better to do,” Lehmann said. “We have tried to communicate, but they have fun making noise and intimidating people.”

[Lorelei]

The adverts are backfiring in a big way:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Sorry--I-Dont-Want-A-Scientology-Ad-On-My-Hubs-Get-It-Off

One critic of Scientology noted that s/he saw a Sci advert during Anderson Cooper's news show.

Last year, I saw a few on A&E for Dianetics that aired during "Intervention," which struck me as particularly inappropriate, given that Dianetics IS Scientology, and Scientology's Narconon front group offers nothing whatsoever that might be useful to addicts.

[FYIANON]

Interesting blog comparing the new scientology advertising vs the children of god cult. It seems both exploit their females.  At first I blew this off, but as I re watched the videos it seemed much more plausible.


this blog is hard to copy and paste, but I urge everyone to give it a look over: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/29/747792/-Scientologys-Flirty-Fishing-Experiment-in-Advertising


I had forgotten about this other cult and flirty fishing.

[Lorelei]

Adverts have also been spotted on A&E (forget which program, and the commercials are totally ignorable) and during Anderson Cooper news shows.

[Raven]

It seems the ads aren't working so much

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/faith/2009/07/reviewing_the_scientology_adve.html


I guess overcoming all the bad press they've had is too much for a 10 second or minute tv spot.  I do agree with the assessment that these are professionally done. This isn't the poorly done garbage that sci normally puts out.

[Lorelei]

It seems the ads aren't working so much

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/faith/2009/07/reviewing_the_scientology_adve.html


I guess overcoming all the bad press they've had is too much for a 10 second or minute tv spot.  I do agree with the assessment that these are professionally done. This isn't the poorly done garbage that sci normally puts out.

This is the bit that seems most relevant:

Besides the unbelievable coincidence of ending the three commercials with obvious double entendres and young females, there is the fact that the sexualized language only appears when a comely young woman is the object of a close-up shot.  The commercials also depicted mountains, mansions, basketball, cars, paper clips, boys, grandmothers, caves, men, money, bookshelves, houses, etc., but the "flirting" language always appears on cue when a desireable young woman is on screen.

   

Scientology has spent millions of dollars to produce and market these commercials on national television.  They knew exactly what they were doing.  Is it appropriate for Scientology to use sexuality and teenage girls (or at least teenage-looking girls) to market their religion? McDonald's, the Methodist Church and Ford have never introduced an ad campaign that included a long overhead pan of a young girl in bed at night, with a voiceover saying: "That aching desire, that unexplainable emptiness that can only be filled by one thing ...." 

   

In the end, there is nothing that can be done about the cult's exercise of free speech other than to understand it and make sure others are aware of the sneaky "Joe Camel-like" strategies being used. Also, you can register your disgust if you are so inclined.  Finally, as they are a very litigious band of mind gypsies, I will provide the appropriate disclaimer:  These are my opinions only.

The Joe Camel analogy is particularly apt.

A quick share: I was an intern at the (unnamed here, though it isn't difficult to track down) advertising agency behind a lot of the Joe Camel adverts. That's be the late 1980s, I reckon. A few years later, that campaign was universally scorned for having "kid appeal" while selling cigarettes. The guilty parties swore that this was unintentional, but I WAS THERE, and they were VERY aware of this! The rationale was something like, "well, OF COURSE we don't want CHILDREN to smoke...but if they DO choose to smoke when they grow up, we want them to think of Camels!"

Scientology using sexuality (particularly objectifying women as sex objects) is not the worst example of such things I have seen, but it certainly does seem odd that a cult wanting to be seen as a legitimate religion would green light adverts that make them look like Humbert Humbert perving out on a particular twelve with heart-shaped sunglasses licking a lolly.

At any rate, I am THRILLED they are wasting millions of dollars just to annoy people, come off as creepy and misogynistic and anti-feminist, and--just a guess--stimulating a lot of dinner table conversations between savvy parents and their kids that, bottom line, probably sound a lot like "Now, Johnny, that there is a space alien cult full of weirdos, and I don't want you wasting your time and money on that rot!"

No matter how much money they spend, and I hope they spend BILLIONS on these fialures of advertising that are pissing people off, they can't manage to de-creep-ify their message. 

[Raven]

You know telling some young boys "hey they have cute girls" and then parents saying and aliens too might be encouraging to a certain group lol


It is interesting to see them steal from another companies advertising campaign. Maybe they hope to be as addictive as cigarettes?

[Lorelei]

It is interesting to see them steal from another companies advertising campaign. Maybe they hope to be as addictive as cigarettes?

To be clear, the adverts have little to do with Camel / Joe Camel beyond the "appeal to youngsters" part. My point was that most advertising agencies are very savvy about imagery and persuasive techniques. They may swear, later, that they had no clue, but they DO know. If you ever get me wound up on the topic of advertising and sit me in front of a TV with you for a few hours, I can point out a lot of persuasion techniques being used. We're so inured to them that they wash right over us most of the time like background noise.

It's also not news that sexual imagery, 99% of the time females as idealized sexual objects, is very common in advertising. There are certain things, however, for which sexual imagery is disturbing or just wrong (and, yes, creepy). Trying to sell the little monkeys a new Elmo toy? Asking for donations to save abused / abandoned animals in shelters? Promoting a legitimate religion? You better not let any sexual imagery sneak into that advert. I'm just saying.

The sticking point here is that this is supposedly (according to the cult) a CHURCH. First of all, besides Latter Day Saints / Mormons pushing free copies of The Book of Mormon every holiday season via adverts (and the very, very rare sighting of a local-only and low-budget "we're pretty awesome" Baptist adverts for specific congregations) how many legitimate churches advertise this heavily? And, further, how many legitimate churches use sexually-loaded language and misogynistic / sexual images in their adverts when they do?

The cult simply can not help themselves: they are so out of touch with normal society and normal responses that they inevitably come off as desperate, deceptive, sneaky, overly dramatic and self-important, and creepy.

[ethercat]

My point was that most advertising agencies are very savvy about imagery and persuasive techniques. They may swear, later, that they had no clue, but they DO know. If you ever get me wound up on the topic of advertising and sit me in front of a TV with you for a few hours, I can point out a lot of persuasion techniques being used. We're so inured to them that they wash right over us most of the time like background noise.

Years ago, I read a book called "I Can Sell You Anything: How I Made Your Favorite TV Commercials With Minimum Truth and Maximum Consequences" by Paul Stevens.  It was quite illuminating to my (then) teenage mind, to understand how we are manipulated so easily - but once we learn how the manipulation works, it doesn't work so well anymore.  There was another book I had intended to read, "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard, which was better recognized and (I think) covered more topics than just TV ads, and I still have a copy of both, but I never was much interested in reading the Persuaders book once I had read the Sell You book - I think maybe opening my mind to the fact that such existed may have been enough to infect me with a chronic case of skepticism.

We work so hard to inform people about the dangers of scientology, and I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be better off trying to educate people about how to recognize fraud and manipulation in general... 

Lorelei, I don't watch much TV, but I have a feeling if we were to sit down for a few hours in front of one, we'd be falling all over each other to identify the techniques first.   

[Lorelei]

Lorelei, I don't watch much TV, but I have a feeling if we were to sit down for a few hours in front of one, we'd be falling all over each other to identify the techniques first.   

*laugh* Probably so!

I can take or leave TV, myself. I went for about 7 years not watching it. Ultra can vouch for my lack of interest in the telly from when we roomed together. In fact, we had a male roommate who was a telly junkie, and I bought a big TV primarily for him and for guests, and secondarily to watch VHS movies on!

Nowadays, I like my Law & Order reruns, crime / forensics / detective dramas & Jon Stewart fix...and news channels, when something interesting is going on / during Presidential races. Every six months or so, I also get on a "home improvement show" jag, feel depressed about my inability to design my own living space right now, and then lose interest again.

As for advertising, I was gung ho about being in Advertising when I graduated college. That was my life's goal. I KNEW what I wanted to be when I was a grown-up! It went artist --> artist and writer --> artist, writer & researcher --> ADVERTISING!

Alas, once I actually tried it on as an intern, I found out that I couldn't be a triple threat (use my art, writing AND research skills), I'd have to choose one and never again touch the other disciplines. I also found out that I'd have to, you know, LIE for a living. For some reason, perhaps naivete, I focused on the really artistic and pop culture relevant advertising campaigns I knew (and stuff like Schoolhouse Rock, promoted & designed by McCaffrey & McCall ad agency in NYC). It wasn't until I had to deal with real ad people and real advertising agency issues that my hopes were ground into dust.

Frankly, I haven't known what I "want to do when I grow up" since. (Suggestions are welcome!) Seriously, with all my creative skills, I don't know what career would actually USE them and pay me enough to live on and sock away bucks for retirement, too. Add to that the fact that I LOATHE office politics, and am truly sick of that garbage (and "team building exercises" and "mandatory weekend retreats and softball" and being told I shouldn't do stuff I'd never do (like wear curlers / bedroom slippers at work or bring in pets / children to an interview) when interviewing for big companies, and being though of as weird because I don't care about reality TV, sports teams, someone else's children / dogs / garden / new materialistic purchases and coworkers who will work harder at getting time off for "mental health days" or getting you to do their jobs FOR THEM rather than just doing their own jobs...ugh). Hey, I actually tend to get SICK from interpersonal bullshit and clockwatching, and all I want to do is do my job and work hard, and the ideal job would involve a lot of "let me work independently and in PEACE" time.

Once I figure all that out, I'll let y'all know. I just know that advertising is not the field for me. I would, again, get physically ill having to constantly copywrite / design advertising that, in essence, is specifically designed to LIE to people about products or services, or manipulate them into purchasing my clients' stuff.

[Raven]

Mark Bunkers take on the situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4xhVxqH-Aw

I'm late to getting it posted here sorry guys

I was thrilled to here the Bunker kitty, but i do disagree about something said in the video. The human rights abuses are in this cults materials.  Getting rid of David/slappy will not cure this.  Ultimately, it has racists materials in it, the rules to the sea org were set up my hubbard for the most part, and etc.  The cruelty of it all lies in the materials as much as who is leading the cult.

[ethercat]

This one theorizes that the ads on the computer and technology sites are to try to attract internet savvy people to help them "handle" the internet situation.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/v_popvli/2009/07/shenanigans-in-the-church-of-c.php?ref=reccafe