3.04.2007

WAH WAH WAH. SHUT UP.

In a world that's becoming absurdly PC, it's only a matter of time before humor and fun disappear completely due to the never-ending stream of offended people. More and more, advertising has been the focus of groups looking to make their whining voices heard. In crystal clear recognition of this trend, Geiko has even released a campaign mocking the ridiculous lengths to which advertisers must go in order to avoid stirring up controversy. Their "caveman" campaign is not only funny, but disturbingly relevant.

Just in the last week there have been two examples that caught my attention.

The first was an open letter written to Volvo asking them to choose one advertising agency over another. Why? Because Arnold, the offending agency, has apparently "created ads for other clients that denigrate fathers." Huh? "National newspaper columnist and talk-show host Glenn Sacks is behind the push that started Feb. 27....Other male groups, including HusbandsandFathers.org and Fathers and Families, are supporting the effort."

(click here for the full story)

Apparently some dads are offended that commercials are making jokes about them. Wah wah wah. My question is this: when did dads become pussies? One of the sole responsibilities of being a father is to teach your kid no to be a crybaby; that there are different types of people and not everyone agrees and that sometimes you gotta take your lumps and that's okay. This ridiculous protest infuriates me as a man, as a human with a father, as a consumer and as an advertising professional.

The next example strikes at something near and dear to my heart. The Pizza Hut "Book It" program. Since I was a boy (1985, to be precise), Pizza Hut has sponsored a reading program the encourages kids to read by rewarding them with a free personal pan pizza for achieving goals. But is now facing opposition from "child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters."

(click here for story)

Well boo-fucking-hoo. Guess what? Reading is important. And guess what else? Kids like pizza. They're going to eat pizza anyways, because it's delicious. And so what if Pizza Hut gets to spread a little good will? They're doing something positive for the community, they deserve a little recognition.

As a man who loves pizza and a former participant in the Book It program, I'm shocked that some fool wants to rob our youth of this glorious tradition. At our elementary school we had a giant caterpillar; every time you read a book you got to put another circle on the caterpillar. During the Book It program, this "book worm" would wind around the school. It was fun and I hope in the future my kids get to earn a free pizza for reading some books.

Would you rather have a world where kids are encouraged to read AND get to eat delicious pizza, or one where we have skinny illiterate hungry children? Would you rather see a satirical portrayal of fathers or an actual world where dads are crybaby bitches?

My message is simple: stop being so sensitive, you're ruining America.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thousands of activists and many activist organizations support the Sacks campaign against Arnold and have communicated their concerns about Arnold Worldwide to Volvo. My organization, fathersandhusbands.org, is one such organization. Fathers and Families is another. There are many more. There's also major support from within the advertising world. Advertising industry veterans are developing and mobilizing highly visible and effective new means to bring this serious cultural phenomenon to an end.

Boys have fallen behind girls in virtually all areas in primary and secondary education. Nearly 60% of America's college students are women, despite the fact that young men have had higher SAT scores, both math and verbal, for as long as the SAT has been around. Approximately two thirds of American graduate students are women. Boys have vastly higher dropout rates and suicide rates. The growing trend toward fatherlessness is so strongly correlated with crime that when you adjust for family configuration you eliminate the correlation between race and crime and the correlation between low income and crime. Each year in marital court millions of loving fathers are deprived of their most sacred responsibility in life and lose the possibility of having meaningful relationships with their children.

The media is unable to produce images of strong, competent father figures because it's become politically incorrect to do so. This can be seen in film, television programming and advertising. The phenomenon is not surprising as many of America’s highest profile mainstream feminist leaders have openly acknowledged their aim to “destroy the enslaving institution of marriage”. Men are portrayed negatively in prime time television 8-12 times more often than women. A recent survey conducted by fathersandhusbands.org shows that men in prime time television are viewed far more often than women as sources of marital discontent, as inadequate parents, and as "corrupt" and "stupid". Respondents to the February 2007 survey indicated by a factor of over 11 to 1 that wives are portrayed more often than husbands as "justifiably dissatisfied with" their spouses and by 17 to 1 that men are more often portrayed as "corrupt". Women were significantly more likely to be seen as intelligent (5 to 4), good looking (7 to 1), and inspiring (5 to 1). In two categories women received all the favorable responses as not a single respondent indicated that men are more often depicted as "good parents" or as "honest".

The body of research indicating that men are in trouble in America is massive. The body of research indicating that our children are in trouble because of the absence of competent and involved fathers is even more massive and is irrefutable. When you see the negativity in the media’s depictions of husbands, fathers and men, it’s fine with us if you choose to “suck it up”. We’re doing something about it.

In 2004 Glenn Sacks initiated a campaign against Verizon’s aggressively anti-father advertising. The Verizon ad in question is available at http://www.fathersandhusbands.org/camp01.htm . His campaign received astoundingly wide support and was covered on five continents in over 300 newspapers and by all of the major US networks. Verizon pulled their ad campaign amidst considerable embarrassment... at a cost that was negligible compared to their advertising budget. Despite the awakening that this effort helped to bring about, we have seen the pattern of male bashing advertising continue in full force.

Arnold has based their most recent Fidelity campaign almost exclusively on a single theme. It goes like this. “Here’s a stupid man who’s viewed with contempt by his wife, daughter or the female members of his community. No matter how stupid, obnoxious or pathetic a man is, we can take care of his money… so give us your money.” I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really work for me. The Arnold work has been consistently described by average viewers, men, women, children, activists, ad agency employees and high level advertising executives alike as pathetically bad advertising. Yet the opportunity to portray men in this way was so appealing to Fidelity CMO Claire Huang that she spent hundreds of millions of our 401k dollars to put this in our living rooms… and Fidelity’s top brass didn’t bother to notice. We could have gone after Fidelity and they would have quickly pulled the campaign, but the next one like this would have come along in no time.

Now we’re holding the agencies accountable for their work by asking their customer’s to make socially responsible choices in agency selection. It’s going to work because they know we’re right. This is going to cost the worst offenders hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. We’re working in the press, in radio, in television, in the blogosphere, occasionally with the highest of profiles and more often behind the scenes to drive a vital change. Upton Sinclair said “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” So, if you work for an agency that’s going to create this socially toxic garbage, we’re coming after your salary. You get it? This is your wake up call.

3:13 AM
the mouth said...

Listen, Dick, you seem to have missed the point. I don't think complaining about an ad instead of seeing the humor in it reflects well on dads or improves their standing in the eyes of the community. If anything, I think there's going to be a backlash (see my blog, for example) against your cause for taking such a ridiculous and meaningless stand. But thank you for delivering your little pitch for Crybaby Dads of America.

8:01 PM
Anonymous said...

We're not doing this to convince America that we're good men. Virtually no one will ever know who we are. It's actually kind of telling that you saw it that way. We're doing this so the hundreds of millions of Americans that have been served many trillions of demeaning images of husbands and fathers over the last decade will see more positive than negative depictions of them over the next.

It really does matter.

10:04 PM

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