People today: they're all angry! There's taxes, politics-hell, the little man is getting screwed left and right! Corporate America understands and empathizes with your anger, and would like to encourage you to channel it into the constructive area of commerce. "On some fundamental level everyone's sick of everything, economically, politically," says one ad agency exec. Fortunately, skilled advertisers are able to take this vague and unsubstantiated insight into your psyche and put it to use by making just the type of ads that you want to see: angry ones! Just look:

Jackson Hewitt says: Taxes make you break things.

Southwest: God damn airlines and their fees!

But anger only goes so far:

Among the ads in the Southwest campaign was one featuring a mock coupon that read, "Don't #$*!% me over," which appeared above a declaration that "Southwest is the only airline that accepts this coupon." That ad, however, was withdrawn.

Assholes! God!



[NYT]