Spend a semester in an introductory economics course and the link between price controls and scarcity becomes perfectly clear to you. Thing is, 99% of the population won’t spend a semester studying economics. So…¿cómo se hace?
Maybe like this…
or like this…
 | LD on Scarcity was much cooler under… |
| LD on Today’s moment of z… |
 | Kepler on Today’s moment of z… |
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 | Escualidus Arrechus on Today’s moment of z… |
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Well, the idea is clever but they could used people who are obviously NOT from the choir. Perhaps they could have used people from the congregation in general or – God allowed – from outside the church.
I bet almost all those guys shown in those nice videos live in an area that is less than 500km2 in size, from Chacao to El Hatillo and Baruta. Perhaps one of them came from El Trigal or Camoruco in Valencia. Half of them may have a tourist visa for the USA.
A friend of mine who lives in El Tocuyo and another one who lives in Los Guayos will tell you they think those videos are out of focus.
The problem is real and I understand the need to convey the message, but the style and the “case” need to be re-examined. And it is not easy once you start to find out what kind of products my friend in El Tocuyo gets from Mercal and how the school she attended for a couple of years as a child now has a couple of teachers who may be as bad as the one teacher she had back then but now do not stop going after two years.
Sorry to be so gloomy.
Most messages are designed by middle class people for middle class people, forgetting those of lower classes, who are the ones who will decode elections. Good for Kepler!!!!!!!!!!
Kepler: true enough, although price controls are popular throughout every social class… People love distortions and price controls over other people’s services and goods. Cadivi, industry subsidies, parking lot fares, gas prices, the rent (which is always “too dam high”)… You name it.
They fail to understand the link between scarcity and prices. And if they have studied that in University, they only have grasped that in Venezuela market rules don’t seem to apply (but, alas, do they apply…).
In any case: weren’t Hot Dog prices controlled by the purveyors? I remember sings of UNIVENPECALIPRE (Union de Vendedores de Perros Calientes y Alimentos Preparados) at stands, though I haven’t seen them anymore… Plumrose’s carritos seem to have different prices, and seem to be succesful (perhaps it’s a matter of brand security), and most carritos offer their own take on the hot dog condiments.
Sure enough, Aveledo, but it’s the genetic and socio-economic of the actors that seem more problematic in my eyes. I suppose the woman with the child and the un-milk is a US ad, I suppose it was “the idea”…I don’t count that…but just look at the others. Do you think most Venezuelans not voting now, undecided or the like look like those guys watching the non-existing TV? The bloke with the invisible car? They could come from Spain or Italy.
The vast majority of those we need to convince now have a darker skin colour than those actors.
Most Venezuelans, in spite of the epic jams we see, do not have a car. The vast majority of those 40% who didn’t vote in Los Guayos, in La Guajira, the vast majority of the 35% that doesn’t vote in most Chavista areas, do not have a car. They also don’t live in a place that looks like that flat.
We have an extremely heterogeneous proto-nation and yet we haven’t learnt how to portray it in political ads 13 years into Chávez’s rule?
Yeah, and the guy is wearing shirt and tie, really?
Please, is it that difficult to make something that most Venezuelans can empathize with?
Kepler’s post hits the nail in the head, I’ve watched the videos and have to say that despite getting the point out there, they can be easily misconstrued. I can easily see how this not only targets the wrong population segment, it may be used to the government’s political advantage. My first impression: the oligarchs are finally experiencing what you C-D-E segments have for decades! Way to go Chavez! at least now we’re even.
Just by targeting a much more “average” Venezuelan this video could have done wonders, I find it counterproductive at best if it ever goes beyond classrooms of la “Catolica” o la “Metro”
Have these poorly conceived ads been test marketed — at all? Because, not only is the message poorly conveyed — to me and likely to the average juan and josefina, but the ads are peopled by actors that I can’t relate to. And I say that as an ‘euro descendiente’. I wouldn’t join ANAUCO if consumer monies are paying for ads, such as #2, which I summarize as follows: pretty, pastel palette, plasticky people.
Dumb.
Great ads!..exactly what we needed to make inroads in a key demographic: The very-white-rich-good-looking-UMet-student kids at the swing district of Alto Hatillo-La Lagunita…oh wait! fuck!
Seriously not good stuff
Agreed with all of the comments above. The message is clear, only if you already understand it. If you don’t, there is no instruction for the unenlightened to help them make the connection.
I wouldn’t say these ads are poorly conceived. In fact, I think they’re right on the spot, message-wise. But the actors and the settings may be a problem so big as to make them impossible to relate to most of our countrymen. Venezuela is not Caracas, and Caracas is not Alto Prado or El Cafetal. As a rule of thumb, for polltical ads aimed at the biggest swath of population possible, I would choose the opposite type of people portayed here, who are, as Syd observes: pretty, pastel palleted, plasticky.
Some day this country is going to get too full of Caracas.
If only, the add doesn’t even seem to take place in Caracas, or Venezuela for that matter, but it PropagandaParaElCafetalLand.
Juan – I think this country got too full of Caracas 13 years ago.
I wish that at least they had filmed it in Sabana Grande!
I agree with both points of criticism with both ads: they’re too polished, the intended audience already knows about the negative effects of controls, while the audience these ads should go in the first place doesn’t know much about economy and it doesn’t explain it in simple terms.
For the lower classes, price controls means cheap stuff or IT’S FREE!
Try negotiating with a union leader that a new pair of gloves per week for every worker is a lousy rule if there are some workers who only drive, so their gloves last months, while other workers handle sheet metal, so their gloves last half a day.
Or try getting workers to vote on receiving a ticket for the daily bus ride, versus receiving the money equivalent of that ticket so that those who don’t ride the bus can spend it on something else.
These ads seem fail, to me. I would rather see an ad showing a teenager from a barrio trying to set up a hot dog stand and explaining to his girlfriend why he can’t make the numbers work. Or a farmer explaining to his wife why it’s better to kill the cow than milk it.
Of course, on a positive note, I would complement the ads with one about putting a halt on chavista graft and regressiveness, and distributing all that cash… :)
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I agree with the comments, except that I do see a difference between the two ads. The second one with the car is garbage and the settings are way too sifrinos.
But the hot dog one is not too far off. Everybody eats “perros”. Maybe it’s a metter of setting the perros in a downtown location, or trying a more local product like chicha or arepas (una bien resuelta vs una piche) instead.
I don’t really want to beat a dead horse, but I agree that both ads (and particularly the second) are very poor. The main problem is that the relationship between controls and shortages is not clear at all. Now, I can understand that it’s difficult to explain why controls create shortages without going all technical with supply and demand curves, but something like what extorres suggested would be a better way to show it: a perrocalentero or a campesino explaining in a very casual way how the numbers just don’t and upp. You might even be able to stretch it a bit further, and show that price controls leave people out of business and jobs are lost because of that.
However, given that the target audience have been hearing for 13 years that “markets = capitalism = evil”, I reckon it’s going to be a tough cookie.
At least the “pouring milk on the cereal without there not being any actual milk” effect was pretty cool.
Let me say it in spanish:
“Los actores se ven muy sevilluos”