Commercials: The Dumbing Down of America

By

William A. Gralnick

Which are the dumbest commercials on TV? Figuring it out is an Excedrin headache. Is it the football coach yelling to the locker room about wine? Is it every Geico commercial or every one from every insurance company? Thank goodness for taping shows and then zooming through the commercials. Pity the people without smart televisions who can’t do that. They get more commercials than the rest of us because they have to watch them. And the children? What do these 10 or 15 seconds of ridiculousness do to them? Don’t get me started. But today’s rant is about politics and its commercials.

The Playing Field

Tackling this subject is like trying to catch a whale, it’s that big. Think of any product. There’s a commercial for it, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have it, save for word of mouth. Since there are a countless number of products there are a countless number of commercials. Some are good, the definition of being good is the commercial is obvious, it relates to the product and tells you to buy it. Hand lotion commercials fit the bill. Rub it in, your skin feels good, your skin smells good, you feel good. Now that’s a commercial that works for me. We used to produce those kinds of commercials. I don’t know what happened. Watching an Alka Seltzer commercial you knew what the product was for. It was very straightforward and sometimes even funny. If you had an upset stomach those speedy little bubbles would make you all better. If you had a headache the aspirin commercials pointed you to relief. ‘a really bad headache, then it was Excedrin. Betty White stood next to a refrigerator. There was no question what that one was all about.

Narrowing The Field: Insurance and Pharmaceuticals)

Insurance commercials seem to dot the largest amount of the TV landscape. There seems to be a war between Liberty and Progressive with All-State not far behind. For one we have followed generations, a grandfather, a son, and now a baby plus two generations of Emus. In one set of commercials, each generation except the Emus can say Liberty. In another the idiot who can’t say Liberty, he best being Liberty-bibity, is reprised who will replace the father, Doug, who finds out he’s being replaced while he’s reading the script for the next commercial that tells him a Grand piano is going to fall on him. This tells you more about scriptwriters than insurance policies.

With All-State we get Mr. Mayhem. He personifies why one should buy insurance by portraying accidents that probably would never happen. And he loves every minute of it. If you’re looking for some insurance policy answers, you’re not going to find it in these commercials either.

I am so annoyed by Flo and her merry band of Progressive-ites, that I won’t even waste much space on them. The kindest thing to be said about Flo and her moron sidekick is that they make the Geico look good. Living in South Florida I see hundreds if not thousands of Geikos. Not a one sells insurance. Why would someone be induced to buy insurance from a lizard? I don’t know.

My next offering is the commercials from Big Pharma including the OTC meds. I love the OTC commercials. They start by telling you basically that there is no scientific evidence who what they are about to tell you, nor has any of the products being tested, no less approved by the FDA.

I guess it’s a tie when you watch the drugs that are tested and approved. They mostly seem to take place in idyllic settings often with Brigadoon-like comfort zones. However, at the end come the “better watch outs” often read by speed-talkers that tell you about all the potentially awful things these meds can do to you including kill you. The warning is then followed by, and often trips over the warnings ending by taking you back to Paradise Island or the like. The message appears to be if this maims or kills you, at least you’ll die in Brer Rabbit’s happy place.

Before closing out, the reader should be assured that radio, except Satellite Radio, is no better. Here is a yeh/boo example. The commercial is about owners selling life insurance policies. The “yeh” part is that the commercial tells one up front what its point is. The boo part is listening to it. A man whose voice sounds like Rip Van Winkle awakened with a start begins to drone, “I didn’t know I could…” The sly trick here is that because the listener is driving a car, the commercial has to be listened to. No disappearing into a deep sleep.

Finale: What to do.

Thank God for Smart Resume. We tape most shows because there is a lot we follow. Smart resume allows with a touch of a button to slide right past the commercials. But in at least the sports world we’re now seeing “sidebar” commercials while there is action on the field. Drat.

To save one’s mind, and eyes, being proactivity is needed.

1. Write to your congressperson. There is a law that says commercials can be voiced no louder than the show in which they are embedded. Enforce that law and at least your hair doesn’t have to get blown backward as the commercial’s soundtrack blows out of the TV.
2. Send a letter to company headquarters. Tell them you are offended by the commercials and that if their levels aren’t raised the commercial itself will drive you to buy a different product
3. Start a petition calling for straight-to-the-point commercials and the end to attempts to bury the bad things a product can do to you. Circulate the petition; ask friends and family to do the same. Send it to the targeted companies.
4. And if commercials bother you as much as they do me, and you’re younger than I am, get a few folks together, make a few signs, and picket a company. The novelty of your action is guaranteed to garner press attention—especially if you tip them off ahead of time.

The bottom line is that if something bothers you enough, you can do something about it.