My post about tv commercials that demean men in general and fathers in particular isn’t the entire story. While the sheer numbers of doofus dad/man smart wife/girlfriend ads are overwhelming and definitely represent a cliche in the ad industry, there are some advertisers and ad agencies that still recognize that men care about their families too, take care of their kids, and do important things. This Chevy heavy duty pickup track ad hits all three of those notes. It starts with guy getting behind the wheel of a Silverado HD and start towing a piece of construction equipment through hill and dale, then pulling up in front of building, getting out, opening the back door, reaching in and picking up what we see for the first time, his sleeping child and then carrying him/her into what we see as the camera pulls back is a child care center. Comedian and actor Tim Allen does the voiceover with the tag line: “The things you carry are more important than the things you haul”. With all the criticism GM gets, at least they got this one right.
In reality, the 1960s vintage Goodyear ad with the husband concerned about his wife being safe while driving is of a piece with this ad and with the “so much is riding on your tires” Michelin ads, like the one below. It, by the way, is for high performance tires and uses sports car noises on the soundtrack. The Michelin ad isn’t as overtly appealing to men but generally performance tires are indeed marketed in media venues with a high male demographic.
When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery, Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News
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As a long time chevy truck owner, I really liked this commercial when I saw it. . .but since I’m completely averse to buying anything from the government, I won’t be buying a Government Motors HD Silverado any time soon.
Too bad because I really like the looks of them.
sales must be getting really bad to have commercials showing men in a good light, like these. women not likely to the target market here anyway, so no chance of offending.
i too will not purchase any vehicles from socialist motors, or deal with any of those companies seized by the sinister government lackeys.
Greetings:
At the risk of appearing contentious, is there a reason why you avoided the “Stupid White Guy” aspect of the televised advertisement culture.
They show stupid black and Asian guys too. It’s safer with white guys, but they mock minority men too. Never minority women though. I did cover ads that demean men in my last post.
Sorry, but 11B40 is more right than you.
Two comic AT&T cell phone ads about getting your text msgs slow demonstrate the same point:
1) Dorky white guys doesn’t get msg saying the flash mob performance has been moved back in the train station, ruining the whole thing. Key: raction shot of white woman and black man giving him the ‘you dumbass’ look.
2) Black guy gets grumpy and puts his foot in his mouth, thinking he’s been deliberately excluded from the free tacos at the office. But this only *appears* to undercut the stupid white guy campiagn — note that only the black woman and other black guy are allowed in the the ‘you dumbass’ reaction shot.
The bias can be subtle, but is very real.
Bonus question: note all of the commercials, public svc ads, comedies etc that show a diverse crowd, or hopping from couple to couple. Notice that when interacial black-white pairings are shown,it is nearly 10 to 1 shown as a black man with a white woman. Why is that? If the issue was simply colorblindness, wouldn’t the reverse combination be just as common? But to simply note this objectively true observation about a disparity that can’t be accidental, means I must be a racist.
“Good news, kid. You’re getting a new truck…” A Mechanic informs a Young Guy his old Chevy pick-up isn’t worth fixing. But while cleaning out the glove box, the Guy finds an old photo of his father, and himself as a toddler, posing with the pick-up truck…
Next shot has the Young Guy giving the Mechanic a literal blank check: “Just fix it.” The Guy, obviously not rich, walks off with his young wife and son.
The acting is crude and the Mechanic has suspiciously tweezed eyebrows. But you will still find your eyes suddenly wet. I don’t know how widely seen this ad is, I tend to watch a lot of NASCAR and PBR… It’s a commercial that respects men, fathers and fatherhood. It also shows that Chevy respects it’s customers.
Those Michelin “baby” ads were targeted towards women exclusively. “Buy our tires or we kill this baby” was always the subtext. A buddy who was in the tire business at the time said this was always the plan, and that it was highly successful among women in the under 50 demographic, one of the most successful and long-running ad campaigns in history.
Their most popular ad didn’t even actually have a baby in it, but featured a bunch of women at a baby shower. The baby didn’t actually have to be visible for this ad campaign to work. Either brilliant or disgusting, depending on your POV.
Being ample, I’m not the demographic. But I got the “buy these tires or you want your baby to die.” vibe. Will not buy those tires because of such a disgusting ad.
It’s nice to see a post about this subject. I’ve been pointing out commercials to my wife where Men, and Dads in particular, are bumbling buffoons. This has been going on for years. I’d love to hear some of the earliest examples that anyone knows of commercials like this.
It’s not just commercials. The stupid guy/dad meme has had the run of mass media entertainment since the days of Amos ‘n Andy. The show has been panned as presenting blacks in an unflattering light but that is not entirely the case. The characters Andy and Kingfish were certainly presented as dimwits with affected speech patterns. Their long-suffering wives, however, were articulate and clearly presented as the “brains of the operation”. Now fast forward a few years and you will see the same pattern presented in Andy Griffith, All In The Family, The Jeffersons and so on.
If there was ever an opportunity for an advocacy movement this is it!
Andy Griffith? Really? I recall Andy Taylor being the exemplification of wisdom as father, boss, friend and public servant (no long-suffering wife). Andy was a great male role model.
(Apologies in advance if this turns out to be a double post. The first seems to have disappeared.)
Funny how a good chunk of the appeal of feminism as it went mainstream in the early 70s was women demanding bad husbands and fathers be held accountable.
Yet somehow it is the *good* husbands and fathers — the ones who are still with their family, don’t cheat, etc are the ones who receive the most vicious treatment by Hollywood and Madison Ave.
Man, I’ve got to change my meds. The commercials, along with yesterday’s, had me choked-up and comment #4 Chevy Runs Deep commercial just had me balling.
You forget and don’t even notice what the last 30 years have been like for men. Then things like this come along and the dam bursts and it becomes overwhelming.
Thanks.
This one appeals to my masculine sensibilities.
It appeals to my masculine sensibilities, too, and I’m a girl.
(My goodness, is that the young actress who plays David Duchovny’s daughter on Showtime’s Californication? I’m a little surprised she gets commercial work with that exposure.)
The Hotels.com “smart, so smart” commercials with the clay people is pretty good. It’s the husband that finds the good hotel deals and impresses the wife. And doesn’t do it at her expense, either.
The car commercial that shows the middle-aged dad talking to his little girl that segues at the end to a teenager is really kind of sweet. Don’t know how men see it, but I see it as a typical “parent worried about child, it’s hard to let go, gee how time flies” kind of thing.
Definite winner is Subaru; dad giving keys to tiny child, cut to dad giving driving advice, back to tiny child having become teen daughter. Definitely . . .
Ignored those bridgestone ads I pointed out the other day I see.
I think this is the ad delayna is referring to. Responsible Dad, worried about and looking out for his little girl. Best example of breaking the idiot dad stereotype.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qf8OGLqE1s
But the car manufacturers can’t make money on trucks and SUVs. Obama said so.
One of the most egregious “demean dad” ads I’ve seen is a public service spot (gee, go figure) in which dad is a total doofus who wants to leave a still smoldering campfire behind and gets lectured to by his extremely disrespectful children on the proper safety procedures. Can somebody tell me what would have been wrong with having father behave like a responsible adult and demonstrate the proper procedures to his children?
The Chevy ad is very good, but my husband and I who are in the market for a new truck will be buying a Ford F Series. For one thing, it’s the best and for another, it’s not GM.
Target audience might be the key.
Perhaps the ad makers figured responsible adults aren’t as likely to leave a fire smoldering, but know-it-all kids or immature adults might. So, they make an ad that shows disrespectful youngsters, a group they want their target audience to identify with, championing the desired conduct and demeaning the authority figure.
I personally think it’s a vestige of the “Question Authority” hippie mantra, as though defiance to all in apparent authority is itself a worthy goal. It allows one to make all authority figures into ready targets.
And I think a lot of that is what drives the thinking behind some of the other offensive ads discussed on this page. The ad makers identify the target audience and make an assumption as to the target audience’s generic authority figure. They then mock that figure to appeal to the target. That so many ads target dads and husbands indicates to me the inherently sexist thinking behind the ‘creatives’: they assume men are in charge, and therefore must be brought down a peg.
Oh,I’m sure you’re right about who the target audience is, but dayum, the dad is such a clueless hump and the kids are so obnoxious. We’ve come to a sad pass if this is the kind of thing that can “reach” our youngsters. Anyhow, I certainly hope they’re not targeting my demographic, because most of us watching who are of “a certain age” are thinking not about fire safety but about what would have happened to us if we had talked to our fathers in that manner.
I grew up with 50s television. 50s sitcom kids could be real wiseacres (think a young Ricky Nelson), but disrespectful? Never. Not even when father didn’t know best.
Another “responsible dad” commercial was the one with the two girls in the car, and the garage door goes up, showing Dad standing in the driveway, reading the morning paper, supposedly oblivious to their intentions. He simply dawdles….until his daughter realizes they aren’t wearing their seat belts. As soon as they buckle up, Dad walks on, and the girls go on their way.
Not only does Father know best, he gives his girl a chance to learn the value of thinking ahead (“what would Daddy want me to do?”).
I love the series of commercials for Liberty Mutual.
Everybody is in it, not just guys, or women or whites or blacks. It’s all about responsibility.
AT&T (I think) has an ad for unlimited mobile-to-mobile. The nebbishy husband tells his wife in the greenhouse, who is using a pruner for all you Freudians out there, that he’s signed them up. She starts out asking how much of *their* money that cost and quickly expands on her poor choice of not marrying some other guy. He doesn’t say anything about *their* gardening hobby, just that the service came free with the unlimited text plan.
I like to think of this as a reaction to the stupid men commercials.
I have owned a GMC truck for 22 years. It’s been good. I will not buy another GM product.
we’ve been told for decades that misogyny was the problem…turns out it’s actually been misandry all along.
Ironic that it’s voiced-over by Tim Allen whose “Tim ‘the Tool Man’ Taylor” character was Patient Zero for 90′s sitcom doofus dads.
love the car ads showing dads caring for their family. my husband doesn’t need to look in a funhouse distorted mirror every day.
we pick tv shows based and movies based on that, too. fwiw, that means things like having dvd’s of older tv shows with decent men.
When I come across these sexist, racist ads, which is seldom because I don’t watch television, I remind myself never to buy from their sponsors.