The Boot to Kraft Foods - Parents Bullying Children

With all the discussion of bullying, Mean Girls and the pop culture lack of respect for anybody, Kraft Foods needs a boot to the noggin for the Jell-O Strawberry Temptations commercial fouling our TV screens. Is a parent scaring a child funny? NOTE: it's the Mom who tells the story of tossing children in a cave. Does it sell product? The main point of advertising is to remember the brand: boy howdy, will I remember this one. Not only will I not buy Jell-O products, I threw out the ones in the house. Pitiful advertising. Who got the big check for this mess?

Introducing the New Boot

Not same as the old boot. Two boots for added impact. I like these boots and the blog will enjoy wearing them. Classy, womanly with strong character. A touch vintage, a dash kinky. Lola would like. There's enough fussiness here with all those laces and grommets that I assume the wearer is fabulously well-to-do enough to hire someone to lace the things up. On The Boots first outing: Dove Men+Care commercials for foaming shower gel for cleaning - man hide. If I was a giggler, I'd be doing that. Skin must be too girly for men with hides to have. And what's body hair, I wonder? Man fur?

Abbott + Solvay + LowT

This week's commercial counsels men who feel a shadow of their former selves to ask their doctor about a medical condition called LowT. Yeah. Guys don't dance, or buy flowers because of a shortage of testerone? And it's a MEDICAL condition? The ad belongs to Abbott Labs, but the website is copyrighted Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Checked further - Abbott Labs acquired Solvay in September this year. And promptly announced it will lay off 3,000 people. And close the United States headquarters of Solvay in Marietta, GA. And this ad is where the money saved on jobs is spent? Sending more goofballs to their doctor to get a prescription pump. Further checking - it's a topically-applied gel! Oy! The whole mess gets The Boot.

Rape Is Rape: Not a Clever Turn of Phrase

Scott Mendelson, in a Yom Kippur "let's forgive some cinema sins" column uses the phrase "debate about whether George Lucas raped our childhoods." This sentence fragment is foul on a couple of levels. Rape is a brutal act, perpetrated generally against women, often against children, and the media needs to stop using the word because it's handy and some journalists are too lazy to think of another turn of phrase. In the spirit of Erev Yom Kippur, I'm asking Scott Mendelson for atonement. Find another word. Contribute to a women's shelter. Write a column about how women are portrayed in cinema. Meanwhile, Scott Mendelson gets The Boot.

The Boot

2012. The movie. It's not just an awful movie (what was John Cusack thinking?) it's got misogynistic dialogue. While a plastic surgeon gropes his wife in the grocery store, and she says "hands off the merchandise," the groper sighs, "women pay thousands of dollars to have me handle their boobs, and you get it for free." Wow. Be still my heart. When asked by a plastic-enhanced patient how the wife met her surgeon chest-groping husband, the wife glances at her breasts and replies that it obviously wasn't the way the patient met him. Ugh. The Boot to anyone who put those lines in, and anyone who left that crap there. We need a scooper in Hollywood.

Marty Kaplan, an otherwise thoughtful writer, in a blog post yesterday, thanks President Obama for points made in his Saturday address: "He nailed Republicans for standing in the way of extending unemployment insurance, and for retailing the canard that a few hundred dollars a week will transform jobless Americans into welfare queens."

There are more men out of work than women. Are we talking gay men here? Did President Obama really say this? I doubt even a Republican said it.

It's too damn easy to leave this language laying about. Scoop it up, Kaplan, Hollywood. I'm not sure today if The Boot is kicking, or stomping. Excuse me while I clean my shoes.

BoA: The New Good Guys

We just saw a commercial, lovely music, no voice over, words like "food banks," "neighborhoods," appearing on the screen: clearly a people-oriented company proud of how deeply it cares about the individual, family + community. Ah huh. I said to Dad, "oh oh, which of The New Good Guys is this going to be?" We waited through the clipart people at the end, and then we knew: bankofamerica.com. We shared a good laugh.

The New Good Guys.

Wonder how much of our "neighborhood" money went to the agency that came up with this gem? I just drew this graphic in 3 minutes flat. Not even a decent effort to snow us, BoA.  I'd give BoA The Boot, but the company's not worthy.

Southwest Airlines Gets The Boot

Same commercial stretch during the NCAA semis: 11 burly boy airline workers line up on the tarmac, hollerin'. Plane begins to taxi, guys lift up shirts to flash the plane as we watch their backs. Cut to interior of plane. Older woman looks out the window and we see the burly boys' bare bellies read B A G S  F L Y  F R E E!.

Well now. I'm sure Southwest Airlines didn't mean that the older woman looking out the window gets a free flight, but gee, guys. Honestly? You can't do better than this?

Who wants to look at bare-bellied hollerin' guys whether you're a bag or not?

Southwest Airlines gets the boot. Maybe two boots.

Miller Lite Gets The Boot

Watched 10 minutes of March Madness; enough time to see about 5 commercials.

Man/woman/dog at a sidewalk bar table. "So if Buster and I were both falling off a cliff, who would you save?" she asks. He chooses her. Then: "Me or your mom?" Same result. Then: "Me or your Miller Lite?"

He thinks. "How high's the cliff?" She stomps away. He snickers to Buster.

Miller Lite forgets women buy beer. Even silly women buy beer. Miller Lite gets the boot. And I will continue not to buy Miller Lite.

Evinrude is Rude

As I was being taught how to find the sports channels today, we landed on a fishing channel, at the beginning of a commercial for Evinrude E-Tec. Evinrude, an outboard motor manufacturer, doesn't bother to tell us - or show us - its new motor. We see a man and a woman standing fishing in a boat. This is good. Women and men fish. Women and men have boats. Women influence major purchase decisions in this category in big, big numbers. So far, so good.

The woman talks, the man shakes his head for 20 seconds. The tagline for the commercial is this:

"A woman will say 21 million words before an E-Tec needs maintenance. A man will say 7 million words."

Not good.

Rule One in advertising: show the product. Rule Two: Try not to tick off any potential buyer

Evinrude needs to do better. I give this commercial "The Boot."