 |
| Eagles Quarterback Nick Foles savors the moment |
Regardless of my mixed feelings, it felt pretty good seeing Philly take down the Patriots in one of the best Super Bowls ever played after assorted so-called "experts" had relegated the Eagles to underdog status throughout the playoffs.
According to Deadline.com, last night's Super Bowl ratings hit an 8-year low.
But in this age of OTT (Over The Top) streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO GO, Hulu and others, I don't think it's really an accurate gauge of a Super Bowl's "success" to reduce it to some kind of calculation of audience reach.
Whatever the audience "numbers" were, hundreds of millions of people around the world watched the broadcast live, and that's saying something in this age when audiences in general are so fractured, consuming media across so many different platforms, on so many different devices and in so many different ways.
Aside from Justin Timberlake's confusing and annoying medley of 60-second snippets of his songs during half-time which USA Today's Maeve McDermott called "a wimpy joke" (was singing a few lines from Prince's "I Would Die For You" beneath a video image of his Purple Majesty the best choice?), Super Bowl 52 was unquestionably one of the most entertaining, exciting and competitive games ever played - and that's saying a lot considering some of the classic Super Bowl finishes.
Back when I used to live in New York City and was actively pursuing acting and voice-overs as career tracks, my old voice-over teacher Stuart used to hold Super Bowl parties at his apartment populated with actors and voice-over artists and various creative types.
When the commercials came on, everyone would go silent and the volume would be turned up so everyone could see and hear the commercials because some of the people in the room were either in the commercials, were involved in casting or producing them, or their voices were being used and it was a pretty big deal in the professional sense.
 |
| Would Dr. King have wanted his words used to sell Dodge trucks? |
We would scrutinize all the commercials for the writing, quality and appeal, and when the game came back on, the volume would be turned back down and everyone would huddle and analyze them.
Overall, my impression was that the commercials this year were pretty "average" considering the amount of money poured into creating them - none of them really blew me away.
The only commercial I responded to emotionally was the Dodge Ram truck commercial which used a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - and not in a good way.
In terms of age and ethnicity, my friend Ian and his girlfriend had a pretty diverse group of people at their Super Bowl party in Lawrenceville, NJ last night.
They had three different TV's set up in different parts of their place so everyone could see the game comfortably, and I just happened to be sitting near three young African-Americans in their 20's in the basement watching the game when the Dodge commercial came on.
Now if you didn't see the commercial, it seemed to follow a visual theme that a few other commercials (including one from Budweiser) used - images of Americans helping one another in the wake of natural disasters like the hurricanes and floods that have ravaged small communities and larger cities like Houston, San Juan, PR and Miami in recent months.
But watching those images of folks lending one another a hand while the voice of Dr. King extols the virtues of service to one's fellow man while images of a Dodge pickup trucks flash across the screen just reeked of poor taste, bad timing and questionable decision-making.
 |
| Was Dr. King's mission about commercial promotion? |
And, as I've often railed about on this blog before, it demonstrates one of the downsides of the advertising industry's sketchy record of recruiting people of color.
The fact that this commercial concept was approved, budgeted, produced and shown in front of a live audience of hundreds of millions of people is a consequence of the ad industry's lack of diversity.
It's one example of not having an African-American or person of color in the decision-making or creative process who can bring a different perspective to the table - I mean did anyone in Dodge's marketing department or in the offices of the ad agency that produced the ad raise their hand in a meeting and ask if this was an appropriate choice?
As Sapna Mashewari observed in an article in the New York Times earlier today:
"Adding to the disconnect, the sermon in question, delivered exactly 50 years ago, touched on the dangers of overspending on items like cars and discussed why people 'are so often taken by advertisers.'"
Sure, the intent of the commercial is obvious: associating the Dodge brand with consumers who value service to others and helping their fellow neighbors in times of crisis and need.
My guess is some creative genius in stylish $800 eyeglasses thought that a commercial using the words of Dr. King at the start of Black History Month would be a nice way to tap African-American consumers - or make white consumers feel better about buying a Dodge Ram at a time when a divisive, overt racist sits in the White House not far from white supremacist policy advisors.
But it wasn't a good idea.
 |
| Members of the Cleveland Browns kneel during the playing of the national anthem earlier this season |
Especially not in a year in which NFL players have made headlines for using their positions to bring attention to the epidemic of disparate use of excessive and deadly force against people of color in this country by some members of U.S. law enforcement.
Not when we have a president who dismisses countries with majority black or latino populations as "shithole countries".
After the commercial played, I took off my glasses and stared at the screen.
Slowly I turned to the group of young African-Americans who were sitting on a couch nearby me sitting in silence and asked, "Did Dodge really just use the words and voice of Dr. King to sell pickup trucks?"
They just nodded quietly, as shocked by what they'd seen as I (and millions of other people) were.
But what's done is done, and Dodge is already facing the heat for the decision - and it's too bad in a sense because the actual words and images were pretty thought-provoking and inspiring, as was the music.
If you haven't seen the commercial give it a watch before this Youtube clip is taken down and Dodge tries to shelve the commercial permanently.
As someone who used to write ad-copy, my sense is that Dodge could have pulled this commercial off using Dr. King's words if they had just stuck to the images of people helping one another - but the insertion of images of Ram pickup trucks turned it into a manipulative hustle instead of a meaningful meditation on the current state of American society under this chaotic president.
It's too bad no black advertising or marketing executive got a chance to weigh in on it before the decision was made to show it.
Access to meaningful input from a different perspective might have given Dodge pause to consider whether using the sacrosanct words of the one of the most influential civil and human rights leader in history to sell pickup trucks was appropriate.
No comments:
Post a Comment