a commercial to hate

Here's a new commercial to hate, as well as a compelling reason to dust off the ol' boycott of things I'd never buy anyway:



This commercial represents a bold shift in the faux-masculine marketing strategy that initially prompted my boycott. Rather than use crude stereotypes and homophobia to sell traditionally male products (like beer and fast food), the Mike's guys are betting these same tools can be used to sell something no male I know has ever purchased. My hunch is that market research found no demographic interested in buying an overly sweet, fruit-flavored malt beverage, so their last-ditch effort to turn things around was simply to tell people that Mike's Hard Lemonade is manly, then hope no one notices that the underlying product has always been about the wussiest thing on earth.

The optimist in me hopes this commercial represents nothing more than the death knell sounding on a really shitty product, rather than the beginning of another depressing cycle of commercials trafficking in tired gender clichés.

The optimist in me is small.

Victory is ours

Certain Blogs would like to thank you, dear reader, for your unflinching support of my advertisers-who-use-unfunny-clichés-and-outright- misconceptions- about-masculinity-to-sell-their-products Boycott.

A mere six months ago, the average viewer was besieged by these types of commercials. But now, thanks to your efforts, either these ads have been expunged from the airwaves or I have become so numb that I no longer notice them. Either way, it smells like victory from here.

Let's look back at the progression of our movement. The first important step happened in mid-summer, when I finally got tired of complaining about these stupid ads. As luck would have it, this initial stage was followed by a prolonged period where I was traveling or otherwise living without cable television. While I was gone, Hummer retooled the commercial that had drawn my ire, rendering my lucid, carefully measured rant obsolete.

The third step happened after I moved to New York, where I ordered a DVR along with my cable package. Armed with the ability to record stuff and fast-forward through the commercials, I became oblivious to whatever buffoonish ads were probably still on TV.

Finally, last week, the death knell sounded.

During the middle of an NFL playoff game, I noticed a peculiar commercial for a pickup truck. The ad begins stupidly enough, with two dudes doing a bunch of rugged things to their truck, like throwing anvils into the bed. But then the guys get into the cab, which is reasonably clean and nice looking. And when the passenger puts his feet on the dashboard, the driver says something like, "hey asshole, get your fucking feet off my dashboard".

I was dumbstruck, and not just by the driver's potty mouth. Here was a character in a truck commercial who (a) used his truck for its intended purpose and (b) didn't want it to look like complete shit if he could help it.

Holy hell! What a reasonable way to act!!!

Boycott Update II

Hummer makes the perfect addition to the list of boycotted products I'd never buy anyway.

Its newest series of ads includes one where an emasculated loser is at the grocery store, buying a shitload of vegetables (probably organic) and a huge thing of tofu. He looks passively at the guy behind him, who's buying charcoal and the biggest rack of ribs I've ever seen in my life. The loser, of course, is embarrassed to be alive. Fortunately, before he can slink back into the narcotic cocoon of his healthy, responsible lifestyle, he happens upon a print Hummer advertisement (inexplicably, this ad is found in the magazine rack at the checkout aisle). Emboldened, the eunuch marches to his shitty yellow hatchback and putt-putts his way to the nearest Hummer dealership. Seconds later, as he drives off in his phat new ride, the slogan arrives on the screen: Restore Your Manhood.

I've whined about these stupid masculinity-based ads in the past, so I'll spare my 3 readers the chore of hearing it again.

What's interesting, though, is the other ad in the series. I've only seen it once, so I'm hazy on the details, but this ad's protagonist is a woman. Something bad or embarrassing happens to her, so she goes to the dealership and buys a new Hummer. The slogan reads "Get Your Girl On".

Apparently one way to reorient yourself with your sexuality is to buy a Hummer, regardless of which sex you belong to. If we're to believe Hummer, purchasing an outrageously expensive (and sometimes illegal) SUV is an appropriate way of embracing both masculinity AND femininity. I can't begin to offer any psychosocial analysis of this idea, so I'll just call it bizarre.

Boycott Update

As long as I'm boycotting stuff I don't buy anyway, I might as well add Cristal to the list.

Certain Boycotts

Watch any televised sporting event and you'll undoubtedly find yourself bombarded with commercials extolling the virtues of being a man. The most prevalent current examples are the T.G.I. Friday's commercial where some assholes (including the guy from Office Space) scream at each other about beef and pork, the Dial commercial for men's body wash (shaped like an oil can!), and the Burger King commercial for the Texas DOUBLE WHOPPER, where the protagonist rebels against his girlfriend's restaurant choice, laments having once been served tofu, then throws a minivan over a bridge (meanwhile, an Asian guy breaks a cinder block with his bare hands). The Miller Lite "Men of the Square Table" series, where B-list celebrities decide the (previously) unwritten rules of male behavior, is a somewhat subtler example of this unsubtle phenomenon.

It is my contention that these commercials suck.

Exactly when this cartoonish distortion of the male id became an advertising staple is difficult to pin down. Chuck Klosterman locates its genesis in the standup comedy of Tim Allen. My associate, Blog Stevens, blames Maxim magazine and its progeny. But I believe these commercials have their roots in the Republican Revolution of 1994. The uneducated male voting bloc, dubbed Angry White Males, was widely credited with allowing the Republicans to regain control of Congress after Soccer Moms helped Clinton into office two years earlier. In the wake of the Republicans' success, advertisers realized that dumb people could be swayed by bad ideas if they (the ideas) were delivered in a vehicle that not only recognized but celebrated their (the dumb people's) mundane lifestyles and myopic Weltanschauungen.

But I don't know. It's not like I expect advertisers to be smart or socially responsible or anything. Their job is just to sell a bunch of shit. What bothers me is that the commercials are just so fucking uncreative.

THIS JUST IN: Men like meat! Men don't like doing things that women like doing! Men are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to obtain beer! Thanks a fucking lot. What's funny about pointing out what everyone already knows?

So anyway, Blog Stevens and I are organizing a boycott of these products. The way we see it, a vegetarian and a guy with zero income boycotting two shitty chain restaurants and a soap company should have ripple effects that shake the advertising industry to its very core.

Perhaps you'd care to join us.