Nokia has a new billboard that ain’t right. See if you can spot the fatal flaw.
It is selling – as shown by the small words in the corner – LONG BATTERY LIFE. And to do so, its stopper headline is "HEY, IT’S GRANDPA. GOT A SECOND?"
Class, what is wrong with this picture? Correct. The billboard is using the wrong gender. (Years ago, we would have said "the wrong sex", but that is, of course, a dirty word.)
The implication of the ad is that you will need a powerful battery because Grandpa is going to talk your ear off. However, this is not true. Grandpa does not talk your ear off. Grandpa sits quietly over there watching Bowling for Dollars. It is GrandMA who talks your ear off.
I will bet most of my carefully accumulated fortune that the Nokia board came out of the Creative Department saying "Grandma". And I will further bet that 42 seconds later, somebody wagged a finger at it and said, "No no no nononono. Talkative elderly women is a stereotype. Lest we get a nasty letter from the League of Loquacious Ladies, make it Grandpa. He won’t bitch."
God damn, political correctness is a curse. It either creates excess timidity, or it runs over to the other side and creates Howard Sterns, who flaunt their lack of political correctness along with their lack of wit, taste, and verbal "off" switch.
As in so many areas, there ought to be a middle ground. I may get myself in trouble here, but I submit that stereotypes abut human groups get to be stereotypes because they start with an element of truth. (Ask my liver if my friends named Thomas Rooney and Brian O’Leary like to drink.) But you’d better be very, very careful if you want to find humour in one.
Years back, there was a truly breakthrough campaign in the U.S. beer business. It was lusty, it was irreverent, it was macho, it was funny. It centred around retired jocks in bar scenes, arguing about whether they drank Miller Lite because "it tastes great" or because "it’s less filling."
The campaign worked because it captured the way guys talk in bars – with no censor listening. And then it fell upon political correctness.
They produced a commercial featuring ex-hockey player Pete Stankowski. The set-up was, Pete was going to tell a Polish joke. And the whole bar – and the whole TV audience – did that very human approach-avoidance thing, where on the one hand you’re afraid it’s going to be tasteless, and on the other, you can’t wait to hear it. So Stankowski proceeded to tell a joke. In Polish. It was a surprise, and the stunned, let-down reaction of the crowd made it very funny.
Within two weeks, the spot was off the air. Yes, there had been complaints, from the Polish Don’t-Do-That Society, or some such. Never mind that the commercial made the Polish guy the hero, nor that it got us to maybe-for-a-moment examine our attitudes about Polish jokes. Nope. Bad commercial. Bad, bad commercial. Go to your room.
The Miller Lite campaign sort of shriveled up and died a while after that. Maybe its time had come, but maybe also it got too careful. It had always been on the edge, at least for its era, and when it started to overthink itself, it lost its vitality.
That would be the end of the story, and it would be unhappy enough, if it weren’t for this unfortunate fact. The Miller Lite campaign is back.
It is back in the same setting – the bar scene – and it has the same creative strategy, taste versus fillingness. However, it has been carefully updated for our modern era.
Instead of testosterous old jocks, it has wise-ass wannabes like Norm MacDonald, playing against supermodels. Immediately, all surprise is gone. Because once you set up the situation that way, there is only one politically correct way you can play it. The woman has to win.
So we sit through a few tired putdowns, then the gorgeous supermodel displays greater sports knowledge than the horny hapless couch potato, then, well, I’m not sure I’ve ever got to the end, I’ve had to check another channel.
Somebody has said, political correctness is fascism masquerading as liberalism. I like that…and it’s boring besides. Anybody want to argue with me? Call me a sexist pig? Send me some nice p.c. examples? I think I’ll stay with this subject awhile.
John Burghardt’s checkered resumé includes the presidency of a national agency, several films for the Shah’s government in Iran, collaboration with Jim Henson to create the Cookie Monster, and a Cannes Gold Lion. The letterhead of his thriving business now reads "STRATEGIC PLANNING • CREATIVE THINKING". He can be reached by phone at (416) 693-5072, by fax at (416) 693-5100 or by e-mail at burgwarp@aol.com
