February 3: Something to Ad

The biggest stars of the Super Bowl happen between the plays. Commercials draw the attention of sports fans and others alike. Doritos, Bud Light, and GoDaddy.com compete for the Nation’s attention at millions of dollars per thirty second time slot.

What these media messages are saying, though, actually is contradictory to what society has been saying the 364 others day of the year. It is not unusual to hear people discussing the objectification of women, the promotion of new technologies, and the status symbols of the newest, biggest ,and best. Unfortunately, you won’t see any combat coming from these highly-anticipated ads. In fact, every media message that has been critiqued in the past 50 years of advertising will be put on display.

In this year’s Super Bowl, we saw a Calvin Klein ad that showed male nudity in its most intense form permissible on television.  We saw Bar Rafaeli and Danica Patrick affirm their sex appeal and use their bodies to see a website that has nothing to do with attractive women. We saw a lifeguard having to help the helpless, bikini-clad damsel in distress, and then expect a kiss as thanks for his act of bravery.

What this says about our media intake is fairly startling. What it really says is that, those things that we so often hear are bad for us, the hostile media messages that ruin our society, actually work. The advertisers wouldn’t use them unless they were successful in selling their product. If images of attractive men and women using a particular product or doing a certain activity didn’t get the average viewer to make a purchase, they wouldn’t use those messages. It is fairly simple. Our culture is saying one thing with our mouths, and another thing with our actions.

There were, of course, some messages that do contradict some of the “negatives” that America faces. There was one commercial in which Coke showed a variety of different sayings, images, in which they promoted the better side of life, including random acts of kindness, love, and care. We saw men dressing up in dresses to play with their daughters, even if it was only to get to a bag of Doritos. We saw a heartwarming story about a man and his horse.

This leaves a very simple question. What do we really want? Do we really want the politically correct answer, images that promote equality in every way, and promote our society’s common good? Or do we want images that will entertain, that will excite, and that will, in truth, manipulate us.

In the end, I don’t have an opinion either way. My thought, however, is that there needs to be some consistency. Either we, as a culture, need to be quiet and stop yelling about the atrocities of the media industry, or we need to change our behavior. Unless some change happens in the behavior of the public in purchasing, the media outlets cannot be held accountable to change their behavior.  The industry is, first and foremost, an industry looking to make money. The longer we give them the money for affirming these social stereotypes, the longer we perpetuate them in our society.

The broadcasting industry is meant to put together content that is designed for the public interest and welfare. Unfortunately, at the moment, the public is creating for itself a very difficult situation when what would be interesting is not the same as what would be good for our welfare.

In the long run, Super Bowl ads will continue to evolve to up the ante for what will be most effective at making money and getting the attention of the public, as they have for several decades. In that evolution, it is the times for the public to make a statement by letting its buying history speak for itself. If that can’t be done, it isn’t what society really wants, in which case we need to come to terms with the stereotypes we are affirming.