BrainTrust Query: Funny or homophobic? Do advertisers need sensitivity training?
By David Morse, President & CEO, New American Dimensions, LLC
Super Bowl Madness used to apply to the game of football and the craziness of watching a good football game. These days, some feel it's a more apt term for the hullabaloo that ensues the following week, when the injured start to voice their aches and pains. The injured parties are not players, however, but spectators claiming to be hurt or offended by Super Bowl commercials.
This year, the biggest fuss was made by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Human Rights Campaign about a Snickers commercial that featured an accidental kiss, Lady and the Tramp style, by two macho mechanics working head to head under the roof a car.
In the ad, the two lock lips after one mechanic is unable to resist taking a bite of the Snicker's bar that his buddy is enjoying. After the kiss, the guys are so mortified that they each pull out a handful of chest hair to reaffirm their manliness, i.e. their heterosexuality.
"It was never our intent to offend anyone," a spokesperson said from Masterfoods USA, Mars' parent company. "We know that humor is highly subjective and understand that some people may have found the ad offensive." Gerry Graf, executive director of Omnicom's TBWAChiatDay, the company that produced the ad, said, "We wanted something that would get people talking during - and after - the game."
Talk people did. "That Snickers, Mars and the NFL would promote and endorse this kind of prejudice is simply inexcusable," GLAAD President Neil Giuliani said in a press statement. "Mars needs to apologize for the deplorable actions of its Snickers brand," he said.
Mars had been planning to build a whole campaign around the ad, which included an invitation to visit a website and vote on three alternative endings. One ending shows a third mechanic joining them and asking, "Is there room for three on this love boat?" The other endings show the two guzzling motor oil and getting into a brawl with wrenches. Visit the website, afterthekiss.com, today and you'll find yourself routed to the Snickers' home page, where no mention of the campaign can be seen or heard.
The Masterfood spokesperson told USA Today, "We've done what we can. We always look at lessons learned. We'll be doing that with this."
Discussion Questions: Do advocacy groups take things too far? Do companies need to be more sensitive? Or should they stand their ground?
Snickers nixed the campaign. But they weren't the only ones to get kicked around for Super Bowl shenanigans.
General Motors agreed to edit a commercial featuring a depressed robot who, after getting fired by the company for shoddy work, jumps off a bridge to the music of Eric Carmen singing "All By Myself," only to wake up inside the factory to discover that he'd been dreaming. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention found the ads offensive. Its executive director, Robert Gebbia, said that GM was "very responsive" and that all references to suicide would be removed.
So what to make of all this? Personally, I thought the General Motors ad was hilarious, devoid of even a trace of bad taste. I also thought the Mars' kiss was funny, but it did touch a nerve in the gay community.
As Commercial Closet creater Michael Wilke points out, it's not the first time that Mars has used a gay theme in its commercials. A 2004 spot for M&M's and Shrek 2 had Shrek telling two "male" M&M candies that they would have to kiss to break a magic spell. One of the candy men walks away saying, "That's not gonna happen."
But Mars isn't the only culprit. Wilke's website features scores of commercials that try to get a laugh by using themes with gay overtones and then showing a "horrific reaction by someone straight." It's a hackneyed stereotype that drives gays crazy.