The Delicate Art of Pursuasion

October 20, 2006,

Advertisements in Switzerland are much better than in Canada. It’s not just that Swiss ads are more skillfully executed – although that too is an important factor – but also that the products they promote are simply more worthy. Back home, most of the billboard space goes to idle vanities like cars, jeans and donation drives for the children’s hospital, but only head-in-the-clouds eccentrics ever try to push that kind of shit in Switzerland. Here, the bulk of the advertising is about just one thing: dairy products. And it would be a staunch vegan indeed who could withstand the cunning, calcium-rich advances of Swiss milk marketing.

And the milk ads, with their lovingly-drawn depictions of Heidi skipping through flowery meadows, along with excerpts from her book in three languages, are only the beginning. There are also the chocolate ads, the yogurt ads, the butter ads, the cheese ads – all of which you can of course find in most other places as well, but with nothing like the level of propagandic saturation that the average Swiss is subjected to. Nor are these staples the only sources of lactose on offer. Even the national soft drink, Rivella – perhaps the most heavily advertised product of all – is made from a by-product of the cheese-making process.

As you can imagine, the enormous quantity of dairy ads packed into this tiny country forces marketers to be ever more imaginative in promoting their own particular brand of bone-building goodness. For a culture-starved North American like me, raised on a tradition of milk advertising where the entire creative process was reduced to deciding which underemployed celebrity to adorn with a hilarious white moustache, it was uplifting to see the how much the Swiss companies think outside the box. And none, in my opinion, has shown more originality than the Stein Cheese Factory, which has launched an energetic campaign near Deborah’s home town.

Now, the Stein Factory does two things. It produces cheese for sale, and it offers tours that take visitors through the mysterious world of cheese creation. Accordingly, you might think that ads for the factory should either promote the quality of the cheese, tout the value of the tours, or somehow combine the two. But Stein’s marketing strategy shuns such mundane solutions – indeed, it shuns any connection to its own goods and services whatsoever. Rather, their ad shows a scowling man brandishing a club in the direction of the viewer, while a caption demands “so, you haven't gone to visit the cheese factory, hm?”

And so for one glorious moment, the modern idea of advertising as an enticement to buy a product is eclipsed by a more pure and noble form: as a threat to batter someone with a blunt object unless they buy a product. No wonder this country consumes so much dairy.

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P.S. - In the time since I wrote this, I've noticed a surprising number (one, to be exact) of other ads that make use of the club-threat motif, the juicy Freudian implications of which I leave to the reader to decipher. In this rare non-dairy promotion, a self-described "strict language school" offers ominously to teach you "a lesson." Presumably this is to be effected with the aid of a stick held at crotch-level by a man so unimpeachably strict that he wears two extended seagulls as a headdress.