Ad it up

By Paul Iorio and John D. Thomas

The urbane and erudite pages of The New Yorker were always prime real estate for ads hawking the wares of the gods of finance. With Wall Street in free fall, that kind of extravagant investment propaganda no longer separates John Updike’s lush prose from those ever-so-droll cat cartoons.

As an experiment, we decided to flip through some back issues of The New Yorker to see just how today’s Wall Street villains portrayed themselves as yesterday’s investment heroes. We also sat back and watched a few of their TV spots. It makes you wonder if magazines and television networks need to add fact-checking departments to their advertising businesses.

In this ad, AIG offers a bit of helpful medical advice: "not worrying can reduce stress and add 15 years to your life." And you’ll need all of that time just to rebuild the nest egg you lost if you were invested with these guys.
(From the August 25, 2008 issue.)
 

As a wannabe pig-tailed Galileo stares into space in this spot, a shameless AIG promises, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know we’ll be there for future rocket scientists.” Too bad it did take a rocket scientist to know how bad AIG was performing before it became the financial equivalent of the space shuttle Columbia.
(From the Feb. 19 & 26, 2007 issue.)


This AIG full-pager had the audacity to clip this quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s classic, “How Do I Love Thee?”: “I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.” How do we hate AIG now? The ways are uncountable.
(From the Oct. 8, 2007 issue.)


Just last October, when Merrill Lynch was running out of dough, it somehow coughed up the bucks for a two-page, full-color spread in consecutive issues of The New Yorker. The tagline reads, “Achieve the Life You Want to Live.” Too bad their Total Merrill service turned out to be total bullshit. Maybe that’s what Merill Lynch was bullish on all along.
(Published in the Oct. 27, 2008 issue.)


Before Citigroup failed and had to be rescued by taxpayers, this ad proclaimed that, “Citi never sleeps.” That makes complete sense now, seeing as how they needed 24 hours a day to fuck you over so badly.
(Published in the Sept. 15, 2008 issue.)


Shortly before UBS became an unprecedented failure, it ran this ad poignantly stating there is a “difference between being listened to and being heard.” Too bad we couldn’t hear them laughing their asses off once we left the room.
(Published in the March 17, 2008 issue.)



In this TV spot, which aired during coverage of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, AIG claimed: "We know money." Listening to it now, it sounds more like, “We no money.”



"You make sure your children are safe in the car, safe on their bikes and safe at night," says this AIG TV ad. What should have been added to that list of things to make your kids safe from? AIG. 



In this TV commercial, failed bank UBS asks: "What do you get when a financial firm with 66,000 people in 50 countries takes the time to understand your needs like it's just the two of you?" Answer. Screwed.



According to this Citi ad: "Ambition never sleeps, aspirations never sleep, goals never sleep.”  And, at Citi, it seems incompetence was the company’s personal insomniac.