Unclear Description: Spokes Sue

I put it at Unclear description, but really I don't know where to put it. Spokes Sue, is it even a Sue? from what I'm reading from the description is about Unsympathetic Advertisers, not Mary Sues.

I was going to suggest a simple merge with So Bad Its Horrible / Advertising, but then I looked at SBIH and realized it has higher standards. But we can still merge it with The Scrappy / Advertising.

And no, this isn't a Sue trope.

edited 11th Jun '12 8:15:34 PM by Routerie

The main trait of a Mary Sue isn't that it's a bad character (it can even be a good character). That's what this trope is. Just a bad ad character. I think. That means the name is actively misleading.

But yeah, TheScrappy.Advertising is what it seems to be.

edited 11th Jun '12 8:30:25 PM by Feather7603

The idea is that the ads are trying to show a character that the viewer wants to be (think the guy from the Mac vs PC ads) It might not quite be a Mary Sue, but it's pretty close.

That's really not what Mary Sue means. No, that's not close either.

So, this is basically Ad Audience Surrogate Failure? (Is there a term for Ad Audience Surrogate or Ad Audience?)

ETA: Or maybe (after rereading the description) Advertisement Spokesperson Failure. It doesn't say it's always an Audience Surrogate - but that's where the Mary Sue bit comes from.

edited 12th Jun '12 9:08:40 AM by SeptimusHeap

The Mary Sue page goes into detail on how broad the term really is.

"Audience Surrogate" is a better way to describe this trope though.

So we don't have a Sue here. Should it be renamed?

Yes, but we need to get a clear definition for this first. As it currently stands, it is broadly "ad spokesperson I don't like", but could also be a Mary Sue in ad-spokeperson form or a literal Ad Audience Surrogate I Dont Like.

We could leave the more negative parts out, and just use it for ad characters that are particularly awesome or perfect, usually as a way of showing the audience how awesome they could be if they were to buy the product. And leave a small mention of the fact that this can sometimes alienate their audience instead of enticing them.

So in the Mac vs. PC ads, the Mac would be this trope, and the PC would be the Scapegoat Ad.

edited 12th Jun '12 12:51:24 PM by abk0100

The definition now:

Advertising can be tough. Often, a brand creates a spokescharacter in an attempt to get its message across in an entertaining way. If done well, these characters can become famous in their own right and bring more attention to the brand. If done poorly, they can end up creating a backlash.

A Spokes Sue is a specific type of failed spokescharacter, one who is supposed to be cool, fun and appealing, but repulses viewers instead by being smug, arrogant and obnoxious. '''Most of the time these characters are never wrong, and everybody in the commercials loves them unconditionally (unless, of course, they represent opposing companies). The worst ones can seem like a combination of God Mode and Black Hole Sues.

Compare/contrast Scapegoat Ad and Strawman Product, where the only purpose of the advertisement is to make an opposing product or service look bad.

The part in bold should be changed. I see no reason to include Sue in the description, so I guess this part should be removed completely: "The worst ones can seem like a combination of God Mode and Black Hole Sues" seems like complaining to me.

edited 12th Jun '12 6:31:56 PM by drdeathray

If you take out everything negative, it's something like this:

Often, a brand creates a spokescharacter in an attempt to get its message across in an entertaining way. If done well, these characters can become famous in their own right and bring more attention to the brand. If done poorly, they can end up creating a backlash.

A [ NAME TO BE DETERMINED ] is a specific type of spokescharacter, one who is supposed to be cool, fun and appealing. Most of the time these characters are never wrong, and everybody in the commercials loves them unconditionally (unless, of course, they represent opposing companies).

When the commercial fails to makes this character likable, they'll end up seeming smug, arrogant and obnoxious.

Contrast Scapegoat Ad and Strawman Product, where the only purpose of the advertisement is to make an opposing product or service look bad.''

edited 13th Jun '12 6:06:09 PM by abk0100

Looks good

I agree with the Spokes Scrappy suggestion.

So, I guess we have 2 options. Leave this as a negative trope (scrappy spokesperson), or change it to a more neutral trope (super special awesome spokesperson).

If we decide to keep it as scrappy spokesperson, I'll probably YKTTW the latter anyway. Opinions?

The original purpose was to be a trope focused on the negative. It even says "is a specific type of failed spokescharacter".

edited 14th Jun '12 5:59:43 PM by drdeathray

It is not a trope, as we refer to those as tools writers can fall back on. It is trivia at best but it reads more like a complaints page...so why not just delete it? We have enough "subjective" pages as is. They do nothing to help in the site's mission to document the tricks of writing fiction so we should be keeping them to a minimum right?

It's an Audience Reaction. I'd still suggest cutting and moving applicable examples to TheScrappy.Advertising. A character done badly so that the audience doesn't like him sounds not distinct enough from a Scrappy character.

Please read the actual page Not A Trope.

I think that the "super awesome ad spokesperson" aspect is the most salvageable.

For me it's just The Scrappy but more specific.

We already have a page for advertising scrappies.

So it's a duplicate?

Audience reactions can have their own page, but this isn't a page about well known audience reactions, like Jump the Shark, where the show is long gone or has its end scheduled and people are pointing to the moment where it was lost. This isn't a term people actually use and reference in works. This is just a character bashing page, and that goes in hand with "not page worthy" on the very page you linked too.

We already have several complain about ___ you don't like as is and list ___ other people didn't like pages. We don't need more of them. Cut.

I like Awesome Spokesperson like the Man Your Man Could Smell Like

"Awesome Spokesperson" has the problem of sounding too positive, as if only successful examples should go there. We need a name that sums up how the character represents what the advertiser thinks of themself, or what they want you to think of them as.