There’s a strange commercial running in the US at present.
At least I found it strange, see what you think.
Two suburban moms are talking at the front door.
One mom has just come over to pick up her young son.
We can hear the two boys playing indoors.
Suddenly the boys rush past the moms into the front garden.
They continue their mock sword fight.
But the pretend swords they are using are rubber dildos.
One even has an anal stimulator attached.
The boys continue their sword fight with the dildos.
The visiting mom is shocked.
The mom who owns the dildos is dying of embarrassment.
The VO says “If your children can find it, they will find it.”
Cut to super: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR GUNS LOCKED AWAY.
I found that ad strange on several levels.
The brief must have been that possessing loaded guns and leaving them lying around wasn’t shocking.
Most people didn’t even think about it.
They just stuffed the guns on the top shelf in the closet.
The only way to register the danger was to compare guns to sex toys.
You’d never leave your sex toys lying around for children to find.
You’d always be really careful about locking them away.
Imagine the embarrassment if the neighbours found out you use sex toys.
Because sex toys are secretly shameful, even though lots of people probably have them.
No one wants anyone else to know.
Fair enough.
So everyone is more careful with their sex toys than with their guns.
Which is why they are used as an analogy for guns.
I find it strange that the argument wasn’t “Lock your guns away in case they kill your children”.
Obviously that argument wasn’t powerful enough.
It won’t cut through.
So they needed a consumer insight.
What is there that people are absolutely certain to make sure their children never find?
Sex toys.
Let’s use that consumer insight as an analogy to promote safer gun ownership.
Think about buying a locking firearms safe.
People with guns don’t bother doing that because it seems excessive, almost paranoid.
And that’s why I find that commercial strange.
I live in a country where owning sex toys is not so shocking as owning loaded firearms.
Sex toys don’t kill people.
Embarrassment doesn’t kill people.
You can get over embarrassment,
You can’t get over having your children killed.
That’s why I found that ad strange.
Sex toys and embarrassment are funny.
Loaded firearms aren’t funny.
I don’t have sex toys or firearms at home.
But I know which one I’d worry more about my children finding.
Or my neighbours finding out about.
I think the fact that you went through this thought process after seeing the ad is a testament to its effectiveness.
Not everyone is works in advertising Adam. I doubt very much that the folks who seem to think dildos and sex toys are more worrying to leave about the house than loaded guns would go through that same process.
It doesn’t say much for the way their mind works. Not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.
I can’t be sure, but my guess is most of the audience that ad was trying to reach probably went upstairs and hid their sex toys a little better. The weapons are probably still sitting in the top drawer.
I find the idea that you don’t have sex toys at home preposterous
I have sex and I have toys. Just not at the same time
Nice comeback there, Dave — real men never replace or compromise real tools.
On a different note:
http://styled-comments.blogspot.ro/2014/07/371.html
I now live in Miami and what is scary about the gun situation is that just in one area of the city, Liberty City (made famous by Grand Theft Auto) there have already been 34 murders with guns. Actually the same as the number of reported deaths this year from Afghanistan. This is crazy. Guns in the US seem so everyday and the news reports shootings as an everyday thing making it easy for people to disassociate themselves from the problem. For me, its a numbers thing and the ad seeks to make people think about just themselves and not about all the numbers they see on a daily basis which have become meaningless.
Maybe it’s not the commercial that is strange Dave.
It’s the target market (pun intended).
The US do have a lenient gun ownership regulations.
Geordie,
Fair enough I suppose, but it still seems weird to me when you won’t put your guns away to save your child’s life.
But you might put them away if it was embarrassing as the neighbours finding out you and your wife have sex.
It’s not a good ad because it only speaks to people who don’t have guns. To speak to gun owners, you need to wrap your ad in a flag and have it carry a cross while Lee Greenwood sings in the background.
Some day I hope this blog takes up the question of how you undo massive amounts of radio and television disinformation which is something the USA suffers from. A quarter of the population is incapable of having a normal conversation about current events due to their astonishingly misinformed beliefs, and these are the people who own most of the guns. Better ads won’t fix that.
Mark,
I was talking to a Moslem guy in Istanbul about this a few months back.
He said he thinks the Mid-West has the same problem as the Middle East: religious fundamentalism.
That’s why most Turks prefer the European, secular model
Attaturk rocked, no doubt about it. But there is a serious atheist movement in the Midwest, as well. P.Z. Myers, a biology prof at a small Minnesota university has emerged as the American Richard Dawkins.
Once the “greatest” generation has passed, I think you’ll find the States will emerge as at least as freethinking as the UK or Europe.
Would you work on an ad campaign to promote the Church of England? (Didn’t think so.)
Mark,
I think the difference lies a little deeper than that.
All the Puritans (Plymouth Rock, Thanksgiving, The Mayflower) were people who left “godless” England.
People who took religion a lot more seriously than just whether the King wanted a new wife.
And yes, I probably would advertise the C of E, it’s harmless and well-meaning.
I’d advertise pretty much anything that isn’t illegal.
I’m not a moral authority, I do advertising.