You've Come Only Part of the Way, Baby

In the months leading up to the 2012 London Olympics, Procter & Gamble ran this ad:

"The hardest job in the world," it proclaimed of being a Mom. Not a parent, but just a Mom. I hated this ad (for one thing, even in the '60s and '70s it was my own Dad's job to get me up and off to hockey for the early morning weekend practices) and I posted my feelings about it at that time on Facebook. I cannot for the life of me find that post right now, despite my fairly exhaustive checking of my Timeline, but I don't recall receiving too much condemnation for my stance. After all, I wasn't complaining about Moms getting "their due"; rather, I was complaining about Dads not getting theirs. It's particularly disappointing to me because, as I wrote on this blog last June and again earlier this month, when I was a "stay-at-home Dad" in the early years of my kids' lives I appeared to be a trailblazer, but it seemed real progress was being made in the recognition and encouragement of Dads everywhere to take a more active role in the raising of their own children. I don't know what happened to those heady days, but the advancement stalled and backslid and these days I find we are really no further ahead than the early '90s when I was home with my kids.

Advertising's "Culture of Meanness"

I saw an older ad for Rogers Communications today. I didn't like this particular ad when it originally ran and now they are recycling it. Two couples are having a barbecue and the women are sitting at a backyard table chatting amiably when all of a sudden the guys yell out in glee, because they are surreptitiously watching "The Big Game" on some sort of mobile device. The women look at them and one of the men sheepishly says, "The burgers are done!" I don't remember what comes next, something about "men and their barbecues" I think (having, apparently, not enough brain power to figure out what's going on), but it's pretty much just crap. The point of this ad is the guys are "getting away with something" because they are watching the game on the sly while they are together cooking the burgers on the grill. But why does there have to be this subterfuge? Why can't they be watching the game while the women have their own mobile device, watching whatever they want to watch? (Actually, it would be better if they were also watching the same damn game, but that's a blog post for another day.) I don't know why this particular Rogers ad got to me today because people generally act reprehensibly in virtually all of their tv spots and most of them are far worse than this one. But it got me thinking about how much meanness and unnecessary anguish is being used these days to sell things that really shouldn't need that kind of a campaign. I understand the value of tugging at your heartstrings or playing with your emotions to give to a "noble cause" (as I spoke of in my post about aggressive solicitation this week), but to sell a phone? Really?