Well, soon after that commercial aired, Kraft decided to paste an additional piece of media smut into our minds using this print ad (in case you had your adult settings on TV and missed the commercial).
**Warning: This link goes to an ad that is inappropriate for work, in my opinion, so be careful where you are when you click.
http://wtxf.images.worldnow.com/images/22594876_BG2.jpg
This series of ads is offensive to me, and the reasons are fourfold.
1. It's stupid.
This ad is dumb. Just plain dumb. And not the kind of dumb that makes you chuckle, but the kind of dumb that makes you wonder if the entire world has gone mad.
2. It's ineffective.
Neither this commercial nor this print ad makes me want to buy salad dressing! In fact, salad dressing is perhaps the most minor character in this 30 second spot, behind the half-naked model, the other ingredients on the table, the brick oven, and the disturbing number of sexual innuendos. The only thing this ad makes me want to buy is hand sanitizer so that I can use it to scrub my corneas and thus never have to watch the ad again.
3. It's offensive to women.
I don't consider myself to be a radical feminist, but I do try to stick up for my fellow woman-kind when I feel we're being slighted, and this ad is an obvious blow to us. Is this what the data show? That women these days are so shallow and unthinking that we will buy salad dressing if a handsome, shirtless man even suggests it? Advertisers have used this tactic for centuries to advertise to men (and that is something that they should be up in arms about, too, but that's beside the point), but usually reserved some modicum of dignity for women, appealing instead to their sense of value, thriftiness, efficiency, or some other respectful quality.
4. Besides being lewd, lascivious, disgusting, inappropriate, crude, and uncouth, this advertising is LAZY!
Believe it or not, more than any other reason, the 4th reason is the worst in my opinion. While the 1960s as depicted by the TV series Mad Men had plenty of unfaithfulness, crude joking, and oversexed culture, they did one thing well: advertising. The ads they come up with on the show are intelligent, well-thought-out, catchy, and effective. They dance gracefully around delicate subjects like the sale of women's undergarments--subtly hinting at advantages like confidence and comfort rather than overtly showing the intimacy of a model wearing the actual garment. You just cannot tell me that the best idea an ad agency these days can come up with about salad dressing is to pretend bread dough is a behind being slapped and to use the bottle as some grotesque phallic symbol. It's lazy advertising. And I don't buy it.
So now I don't buy Kraft salad dressing. And I know that the loss of my little $2.49 or whatever doesn't really hurt the company, but it makes me feel better. That, and blogging about it, so that maybe a few of my fellow blog readers won't give them their $2.49 either. They don't deserve it after that lazy attempt at my business.
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