I could write a whole piece on the subject, which I won’t do here since the Superbowl is over and everybody’s moved on, but my basic points is that nothing was really that innovative, clever or funny – let alone SMART and PROGRESSIVE. I can forgive almost anything if its actually funny- or very fun to watch. Not! Even the sno globe in the balls ad got a groan at our house Instead of a big laugh – and this is the ad that won those guys a million dollars for supposedly being so hilarious! Ionly time when we all laughed out load was the one – I think it was for Monster – where the camera pans around from the opulent richly appointed room with a moosehead on the wall to the poor schlunk working security around the corner with a moosebutt and legs in his face. Need a new job? But again; kinda funny- not a touchdown or whatever the admen call it.

But the real reason I wanted to join the conversation was to rant and see if people were commenting about the hatefulness of that talking flower commercial!!! OMG is right! I hate to even use the brand name but I guess it was teleflora. While I can remember the sharp sting of some of the insults – disturbing and SO un-funny-(whoever wrote that ad, man or woman, has probably been the victim or perp of some nasty verbal abuse in real life to have come up with some of those zingers) what I still haven’t been able to figure out is WHY? I don’t get who the target audience was and what was the point of the little skit- I guess it ends up with the voiceover saying that you can’t always trust the flowers that are sent – and then the office nerd trying to make her feel better by saying “I’d like to see you naked” which is only more humiliating to the poor woman…. God.

The only thing I can think of when I think of developing an ad like this is that they wanted men, the majority of their flower sending customers, to recall some of the meanest things that one might possibly say to a woman and to mentally attach Teleflora to those things for sending flowers when apologies were forthcoming. Beautiful.

Kudos to the person KJ above who wrote in to express her disgust, which I will do shortly. Anyone else find this ad to be THE most offensive? At least Godaddy is predictably neanderthal. Oh, and by the way, you don’t have to use TELEFLORA anymore; you can simply look up and contact a local florist via internet and mobile! Happy Valentine’s and don’t use Teleflora!

The Go Daddy girl was my idea. I told the ad agency, “I want a really well-endowed, good-looking gal in a tight T-shirt, with our name right across her breasts.” We did a nationwide casting, and then the agency called me and said, “Bob, we just found your next ex-wife.” At that point I had been divorced once — for the record, my second ex-wife was not a Go Daddy girl.

It’s… beautiful. Not.

OK OK, yes, it’s horses. Horses are animals, and thus property and owned. But look at Daisy’s owner — a rough, derisive, hints-of-abusive man who indignantly drags his female property (come on, “Daisy” is definitely a recognizeably female name) away from Big Studly but “different people” male suitor (and this horse was ~definitely~ male), while snarking at him with taunts of “lover boy” and “Romeo.” And the two clowns at the end say “I didn’t even know Daisy was dating.” So even though horses were the protagonists, this ad was ~not~ about horses-as-animals.

Here’s how the ad read to me when I first saw it, and still does: Big Studly Masculine All-American Guy falls for pretty little country/ethnic virgin-in-white, but angry father “doesn’t like his type,” yanks her away, and hauls her pretty little ass off to new climes. Her protests are ineffectual, because all good little girls must obey daddy, and so she has no authority or independence of her own. Big Studly Manly Man doesn’t want to give her up, though, and so tracks her down, performing Manly Man feats all along the way (nothing’s gonna stop him!), but only when he is there can she escape, and she then runs off with her New Man.

It’s a Fifties supposedly-romantic movie plot, and I found it even more disturbing than the others because its misogyny was hidden under the innocent-seeming layer of “Romance of Circuses and Pretty Horses” rather than blatantly in-your-face like Go-Daddy and Doritos.

Now, IF Big Powerful Clydesdale was a mare, and IF “Daisy” was “Dennis” (and obviously male as male horses are wont to be), and IF the circus people weren’t all so Obviously Sinisterly Ethnic, then that would be a commercial worth watching.

***

I liked only one commercial this year — the “get a dog” Funny Pets ad.

Did you notice that he’s driving like a maniac; she’s scared they’re going to die; and she has time to comment about her hair getting messed up? Yeah, lovely. Obviously, a disrupted hair-do is just as important to us Mrs Potato Head types as driving off a cliff.

I told them to shove it.

And then all of us actually had like a six-minute discussion about misogyny in advertising. During the Superbowl. I am not kidding. They were uncomfortable with the imagery and they could plainly see that I was extremely uncomfortable with it, so we actually talked about it, what it’s like to see that day after day, how they’d feel if guys were treated like that by commercials, etc.

It was nine kinds of awesome.

Um yes, that certainly SOUNDS nine kinds of awesome! Wow.

And then all of us actually had like a six-minute discussion about misogyny in advertising. During the Superbowl. I am not kidding. They were uncomfortable with the imagery and they could plainly see that I was extremely uncomfortable with it, so we actually talked about it, what it’s like to see that day after day, how they’d feel if guys were treated like that by commercials, etc.

It was nine kinds of awesome.