You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.—Charles Kuralt
Barbies give children a chance to explore and create a world the way they see it, even if it’s not a world adults like
It’s Friday! Bring on the burgers and the beer! Wait, hold on, we still have to actually attend to business first. Burgers are coming, though.
This has been an interesting week in the world of advertising, but the best of the bunch have, rather surprisingly had little to do with that big ol’ football game coming up a week from Sunday. Well, okay, one of them technically has something to do with the game, given that it is the winner of a contest. Still, what makes that one commercial a winner has nothing to do with the game.
Intuit’s QuickBooks sponsored a national contest among its users and a small upstate New York coffee company, Death Wish, won the contest. Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Death With Coffee is the actual name of the company. The name comes from their claim that it is the world’s strongest coffee. I know, that sounds incredibly strong and bitter, but their website claims that it’s actually smooth, with hints of cherry and chocolate. While that’s not enough to make me want to drop $20 for a one-pound bag, should I ever find myself lost in upstate New York (and being lost is about the only reason I’m likely to be up in Round Lake), I might risk stopping by for a cup.
The commercial is definitely a wonderful prize. The 30-second spot itself, which will appear sometime in the third quarter, is worth $5 million, which is almost as much as Death Wish made the entire year. That’s not even counting the incredible amount of production time and an award-winning team that put it all together. All total, the cash equivalent is something like $12 million, give or take a pound of coffee.
Whether the commercial is worth the cost remains to be seen, of course. Will it double Death Wish’s revenue last year? More importantly, will it convince more small business owners to use QuickBooks? Both are pretty big gambles. The game needs to be close, no more than a touchdown difference, for people to still be watching commercials in the third quarter. If the halftime show sucks, and with Coldplay being the headliner that seems quite likely, a good portion of the audience may be dead before the second half ever kicks off. So, go ahead and take a look at the ad now and you won’t have to risk bad music or a bad football game later.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 36 hours or so, you are likely already well aware that Mattel has introduced a new set of Barbie dolls: tall, curvy, and petite. Allegedly, the move is being made to help boost girls’ self-esteem and address body issues that the traditional dolls created. While some would happily sit and argue all day over whether the new dolls actually achieve that goal or make matters worse, the truth is that children like playing with dolls that look like them and their friends. Children use dolls for a number of different fantasy and real-life scenarios, sometimes playing out things that have happened, other times fantasizing about the way they want things to be. For adults to superimpose too much meaning on their play, though, is probably inappropriate for the majority.
What’s different about the spot Mattel and BBDO dropped this week, though, is the involvement of documentarian Rory Kennedy, daughter of the late Bobby Kennedy. This is Ms. Kennedy’s first ad and the non-commercial, documentary feel she gives the piece may be just the approach needed to take on such a touchy topic. People, especially mothers, take Barbie and other dolls quite seriously and Kennedy’s spot does a good job of addressing some of the most common concerns while still keeping the tone of the commercial light and fun.
I don’t expect the new dolls nor the new commercial do actually do much to quiet Mattel’s critics. Some people are not going to be happy no matter what the toy company does so there really is no sense in pursuing every little complaint that might be made. Still, this is a positive step in a good direction. Take a look at Ms. Kennedy’s work below:
https://youtu.be/vPETP7-UfuI
One thing the advertising world has enjoyed for a long time is the art of parody. We parody music, we parody pop culture, we parody celebrities, and we even parody ourselves. So, it’s no surprise at all that my favorite commercial from this week is a wonderfully horrible and yet brilliant piece of parody that is partly in bad taste and at the same time had me instantly Googling Schweid & Sons because I’d never heard of them.
The ad steps into somewhat dangerous territory, parodying the very serious P&G #LikeAGirl ads for Always. Women’s empowerment is obviously a critical issue and one that deserves serious attention. Schweid & Sons, which sells the meat for burgers by the way, isn’t challenging women’s issues at all, though, and brilliantly presents the one woman in the commercial as the only sane person in the whole spot. Instead, what gets justifiably lampooned is the snobbery, especially in upper-scale burger establishments, as to what makes a good hamburger. You want mayo on that? There’s no reason to feel oppressed by those who say you can’t. Go ahead, smash that box, eat your burger with a hot dog on it if you want. Burgers should be as individual as you are.
If you can’t watch the ad with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, realizing that we really do take the details of mere burgers far, far too seriously, then you’ve absolutely no business watching this ad. If you enjoy a good parody, though, and can handle the way both men and the dining industry get skewered, then sit back and enjoy. Then, go out and have a couple of burgers, and don’t be ashamed to ask for mayo.
When The Fairy Tale Ends
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.—Alexandre Dumas
Not every day is a good one, nor should we ever expect them to be.
One of my dear friends, Jane, whose birthday I missed yesterday and who writes a most wonderful blog, frequently reminds her students that the versions of fairy tales they see presented by Disney and the like are not true. When Hans Christian Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid, he justifiably kills his title character at the end; that’s right, the little mermaid dies. In the original telling of Cinderella, the evil stepsisters have their eyes plucked out. The tales penned by the brothers Grimm were bloody, vicious and violent. Why? Because such stories were meant to be cautionary tales, warnings against dangerous, self-centered, and inappropriate behavior. Life is not fair, the stories warn, and happily ever after is a myth.
This week has been a painful reminder of just how unhappy life can be. People we have admired, who have entertained us, who have sacrificed for us, who saved our lives, have passed on. Not just one or two people, as we are rather accustomed to hearing, but several people of some noteworthiness, have left us. Here’s a partial list, in case you weren’t paying attention:
All those people, gone in the span of seven days. There were more, of course. Many died whose names are not so familiar to us. On Friday, a terrorist attack on a Burkina Faso hotel left at least 28 dead, including an American missionary. All around the world, in every hospital in every city, families gathered as loved ones, some old and suffering, some never really having a chance at life, moved on.
So much for a fairy tale with happy endings. This week seems to have gone out of its way to show us that there is no “happily ever after.” Even the lives that seem the most wonderful and glamorous, those who appear to have everything in the world going their way, still die.
What, then, shall we do when the fairy tale is over? When we have run out of tears to cry and are weary from mourning, how do we face this incredibly cruel world? Any good reader should know the answer to that question. When one fairy tale ends, you start another. Tragedy is the platform upon which the foundation of comedy arises. The ending of one story, or one set of stories, prepares us for the beginning of the next.
Yes, it is true that even the next story likely ends with its main character’s demise, but every story is worth the telling. There are lessons to be learned even in the most heart-breaking situations. We do not stop here. We keep going.
I have been distantly following the continuing saga of Cory and Joey Feek, as have millions of others. I’m not going to sit here anre pretend that I was ever a fan. I’m not big into contemporary country music, and until their lives took a tragic turn I’d not even heard of them. Now, it appears that Joey’s story is nearing its end. When it does, headlines will focus on the love of a mother for her daughter, and a husband for his wife, and many will share in their grief. What’s important is that we realize that there is a story that goes onward. Their daughter, Indiana, is just beginning her story, even as her mother’s is ending.
While it is easy to become emeshed in the stories of others, however, we must remember that we are the ones writing our own stories. While our tales may be entertwined with those of others, we are ultimately the authors of our own fates. Even in circumstances where we might not have control of when or how our story ends, we still decide through the way we live and the decisions we make whether our fairy tale is tragic or happy.
2016 seems to be getting off to a very rough start, but perhaps this is this universe telling us that we need to focus more on the future, not the past; that we should focus less on the lives lost and more on those still living. Not that we don’t remember those who have died, but we realize that their passing is but the end of a chapter, not the whole book. The fairy tale is not over. There is so much more to be written and it is up to you to do the writing.
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