Thursday 3 May 2012

cynical? moi?

am i the only person who watched this ad with an increasing sense of annoyance?



i know it's meant to be some kind of tribute to mothers, but the absence of fathers really bothered me.  it seemed to me to insiduously reaffirm the stereotype that all the work around raising children is to be done by mothers, that mothering is vastly different from parenting.  and enforcement of the notion that if you're not a mother, you're missing out on doing the best job in the whole wide world - which is insensitive to women who can't have children and insulting to those who choose not to.

also liked this point, which i missed the first time i watched it:

I like how they used a lot of different races, but did you see how every other race’s house and life looked dirty, cluttered, and poor except the white family?

yup, and only the people of colour were using public transport too.  read into that what you will.

so no, the ad didn't make want to cry and certainly didn't develop in me an urge to buy more proctor & gamble products.  but maybe that's just because i'm too much of a cynic.

ETA: the ad (whoops!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a proud and acive Father I'm often left feeling excluded by ads like this.

Brett Dale said...

The ad was a brilliant piece of viral marketing,it aired on TV, and then once it was on youtube, it took off, and now people around the world are blogging about it, if only a small percentage of people who have seen the ad buy the product, then the marketing people have done their job.

Most the comments on youtube sites, have been positive, with only a few people bringing up gender roles.

In terms of showing the white people as the ones who were financially successful , that caught my eye too.