They Are Commercials, Not Tributes

I don’t care about professional sports.  Not interested.   But I did watch the Super Bowl last night.  Or, more accurately, I watched the Facebook to see what my friends across the country were saying as they  watched the game – and as they watched the commercials.

The commercials are a big part of why many watch this annual televised sporting event.  In my considered opinion they are the real reason the Super Bowl exists – as an excuse for commercials, advertising and corporate sponsors.  It’s not really about the game.  It’s about selling stuff. I care about commercials almost as much as I care about professional sports.  I have taught my kids the mantra, “Commercials are lies.” 

Many of my friends were offended or disgusted by the Go Daddy spot – in which Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli made out with a rather stereotyped computer nerd. This was certainly a toned down commercial from Go Daddy.  Their Super Bowl commercials in years past have pushed the sexy envelope pretty far… This one was tame by comparison.  Granted – it did play on shallow stereotypes, but I don’t understand my friend’s disgust over it.  It was awkward and uncomfortable – yes.  But that’s the intended  humor of the ad.   So why the disgust? Are we disgusted and offended by kissing?  By the nerdy guy getting the pretty girl?  I don’t get it.  

No.  I wasn’t offended or disgusted by that one – the one that most of my friends seemed to hate.  It was the two commercials that most of my FB friends seemed to love that bothered me the most:  Oprah Winfrey’s two minute spiel for Jeep, and Ram Truck’s use of Paul Harvey’s  “God made a farmer…”

Let me here and now declare unequivocally that I do not dislike Oprah Winfrey, American soldiers, Paul Harvey, God, or farmers.  I am not speaking against them.  I am not dismissing them.

What I don’t like is using them to sell stuff. It’s crass and it’s manipulative, and ugly.

One of my friends responded that she didn’t see it that way at all.  To her the Ram commercial “was a tribute to the hard working people who are always working to put food on our tables. Farmers are amazing people.”

And I agree. Farmers are amazing.  But that has nothing to do with trucks.  America values its soldiers, but that has nothing to do with Jeeps.  These are commercials, not tributes.  They are carefully and purposefully designed to sell things by linking our warm feelings to their products. 

Commercials are lies. Not tributes.