& Commentary

Welcome to the future of advertising, and by future I mean, RUN!!!!!

So, there’s lot s of theories on which form of advertising works. No one really knows–Is it the low budget awkwardness of Head-On spots (apply directly to the forehead)? The aspirational high budget slickness that is Nike? The social statement that was Dove’s true beauty campaign? Or is it about being as disruptive as possible with new technology and ad placements. At some point in time will everyone be paid by an advertiser just to be inundated with a product’s blinky-factor? I dunno, but I hope to God it doesn’t look anything like this:

Little People & Men Without Pants

The question isn’t why are men in tighty-whities somewhat amusing—or even why they are so funny right now. The question is: How did two unrelated products end up with the same visual gag? And not only that, but how the hell did they end up back-to-back in the effing Super Bowl?! And then the same thing happens with Dr. Pepper’s “Little Kiss” and the miniaturized Punxsutawney Polamalu. Two little-people site gags back-to-back sprinkled with E-trade talking babies.

And not to mention all of the “men are *woosies” advertising. Which unfortunately may be true. I definitely identified with the Dodge spot. And for that I apologize—to everyone. And to Dodge, because i can’t afford this car.

What I really wanted to talk about here is our collective creative consciousness. I know, it sounds heavy. Forgive me for the professorial sounding slush. If you’ve got a better way to phrase it, I’m all ears.

By “collective” I mean all of us in the ad industry.

By “creative” I mean the stuff that clients buy.

By “consciousness” I mean mind.

Super Bowl ads seem to be a culmination of The Collective. And this year it brought us—men are woosies, tighty-whities are hilarious, and miniature men are entertaining. Congratulations. What I want to know is, how they all happened at once. Is it that creative directors and clients are on the same humor page across the nation? Is there so much homogeny across the creative-client spectrum that they all find the same things funny at the same time? It could be.

Months ago, concepts for Super Bowl commercials were submitted. Art directors and copywriters went into an orgasmic flurry. Millions of media dollars were spent. There were meetings, that led to more meetings, that led to hundreds of hours of labor that birthed phone calls, that led to focus groups, that led to weight gain, hair loss, the threat of divorce, and the consumption of Funyuns. Strategy was scrutinized—changed, re-changed, and tweaked. Ideas were interrogated in back rooms like Cold War spies. Millions were spent to shoot, produce and edit the commercials and POOF!

They have the same jokes in them. Remarkable.

We’ve come to accept that certain things are okay to make fun of and certain things aren’t. And once again the creative-client collaborative has spoken. The only things left to be funny about are “men are woosies” and “miniature men.” Everything else is politically unsafe.

This isn’t to advocate not making fun of men and miniature men for sure. Please do. Just for crying out loud make fun of other shit too—just to have some variety. I’m getting bored here.