{"id":77355,"date":"2021-04-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77355"},"modified":"2021-04-05T13:46:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T18:46:53","slug":"our-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77355","title":{"rendered":"Our Ad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ads don&#8217;t appear by accident.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Least of all television ads, with their high production costs and long lead-times.   If you see something in a television ad, especially an &#8220;agency&#8221; spot (produced by an ad agency, as opposed to something shot at a store or  TV station for a local merchant, you  may be assured someone thought about the message it was portraying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77120\">As we&#8217;ve discussed recently<\/a>, the <em>high<\/em> numbers of African-Americans in TV commercials challenge the idea that Americans are innately racist.   If an add offends someone on some visceral level, it&#8217;s just not going to work.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With that in  mind, I direct your attention to the latest round of commercials for &#8220;Hy Vee&#8221;, the national grocery chain, and what HyVee thinks it says about their customers.  Both spots are done to the tune of the &#8217;80s song <em>Our House<\/em>, by the British ska group &#8220;Madness&#8221;.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s the first one, which came out over the winter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Home Is Where The HyVee Is\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B0Kd7mkGoas?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Note the imagery (amid all the HyVee products):   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Mom is the executive rushing off to the high-power job.  <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Dad is not only getting the kids ready for school.  Not only is he kind of a bumbler, like most TV ad dads, but he <em>looks <\/em>like a buffoon.  <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with dads taking care of kids.  I spent 20 years doing it, 11 of &#8217;em mostly by myself, several more covering the day shift and working nights to save daycare.   Fathers pulling their weight is nothing new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s not an unreasonable assumption that, in the typical family &#8211; whether two-parent or not &#8211; a woman is still making a lot of the shopping decisions.  And HyVee, one of the major retailers, believes that not only is the image of the woman being the high-speed executive bread-winner one that appeals to those consumers, but showing hubby as a hapless buffoon who&#8217;d be lost without her appeals as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=76869\">hardly a novel observation<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HyVee has a new &#8220;Our House&#8221; spot out &#8211; it&#8217;s not out on Youtube just yet, so I can&#8217;t post it here just yet.  And when I first saw it &#8211; with its improbably pretty mom cleaning the house to a fine sheen with her array of HyVee products, and a pronounced &#8220;Father Knows Best&#8221; vibe, I briefly thought &#8220;Ooofda &#8211; how did this get greenlit?  The feministasi are going to have a cow.&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I mentally caught myself.  &#8220;There&#8217;s going to be a whammy&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And sure enough &#8211; Dad finally came home.  And he reminded me of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rip_Taylor\">Rip Taylor<\/a>, if Rip Taylor were playing a Gestapo agent (<em>sans <\/em>long black trench coat &#8211; this agent was dressed like, well, Rip Taylor in a HyVee commercial) &#8211; simultaneously petulant and way below Mom&#8217;s league.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So apparently HyVee&#8217;s marketing department believes that  an ad Dad who is a mass of caricatures, coming across as a spoiled, petulant martinet to his improbably gorgeous, clearly put-upon spouse, is not only <em>not <\/em>going to turn their audience off, but will in fact bring them out to the stores?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does this say about&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;well, not &#8220;society&#8221;, <em>per se<\/em>, but the advertising industry&#8217;s view of society? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ads don&#8217;t appear by accident. Least of all television ads, with their high production costs and long lead-times. If you see something in a television ad, especially an &#8220;agency&#8221; spot (produced by an ad agency, as opposed to something shot at a store or TV station for a local merchant, you may be assured someone [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,24,4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-culture-war","category-media","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77411,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77355\/revisions\/77411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}