There's an ad currently running on television (30 December 2005) for Johnsonville Sausages. It portrays a woman at a supermarket POP display giving out samples of the sausages. The woman states that the sausages are endowed with a liberal infusion of real maple syrup. A man approaches and challenges the woman's words, saying that what she was claiming was not true. The woman retorted that it was. The man arrogantly stated that it wasn't. Then in an effort convince the man, the woman thrusts a sample sausage into his mouth. Upon first taste, the man has an epiphany and realizes there is, in fact, real maple syrup in the Johnsonville product.
What takes place next represents a condeming indictment against much of today's advertising philosophy. The man asked for another sample. The woman responded by telling him that he would first have to go to the end of the line of customers and await his turn. Instantly, a larcenous look flashes across the man's face. Just as quickly, the man grabs hold and steals the woman's hibachi, on which were the cooking sausages. The man is last seen fleeing the scene.
Too often, over the past decade of watching television, we have been subjected to advertisements that condone stealing... that condone rudeness... hostility and, most blatantly, condone self-centered stinginess.
I have to put it to the ad industry: What in hell are we doing when we present advertisements that show selfish, arrogant, mean and outright criminal behavior to television audiences? Especially the child audience? Do we really want to tell children that it's all right to be a thief? To not share a bag of potato chips with a sibling or parents? Are we out of our collective advertising minds when we show a husband, seated at the breakfast table, cramming the last dregs from a box of cereal into his mouth just so he doesn't have to share any of it with his wife? What kind of message are we sending? That it's okay to be a thief, an SOB and a miser? That the only thing that is inportant in our lives is to coddle our self-centeredness?
I n all of these 'hostile' and idiotic television ads, where is the product branding? Where is the foundation for product, and manufacturer loyalty? Where is the logical sales argument that's supposed to convince customers and propel them to the store to buy the product? There is none. There's nothing of value in the ads other than an element of perverse entertainment.
Unfortunately for the television advertising industry, today's mantra is to entertain first – sell second. All right, that's a given. I'm pragmatic. Fortunately, print advertising doesn't have to play childish entertainment games. All I ask of television advertising is that it does not make its appeal to human selfishness in order to sell the client's product, but appeal instead to the better angels of our human nature.
— Don McKay
