Reasonable Doubt
Get Ready for a Wave of Cowardly Super Bowl Ads
Selling yourself in the age of anger means trying to be as bland as possible
My friend, a marketing executive at a Fortune 500 company, is in charge of her company’s ad campaigns. In the past, they’ve made loud proclamations decrying intolerance, racism, and homophobia. The most recent ad, however, just involved some people doing something totally mundane. To protect my friend’s identity, I won’t tell you what they were actually doing, but picture something uncontroversial that all Americans like: dancing in a living room, baking in a cozy kitchen during the holidays, or riding in the car with the top down.
“It was so boring,” she moaned. “We didn’t say anything interesting.”
Not saying anything interesting has become the go-to marketing strategy for many companies these days. It’s simply too much of a minefield to take a stance on any issue while trying to sell to America’s angry, confused, polarized masses.
Mind you, the fact that a company might speak out about anything beyond how tasty its beer is, or how its shoe makes you run faster, is itself a very modern notion. After all, companies exist to sell products, not start political movements. When Maytag began to market dishwashers…
