P&G "Mom" Commercials

[3113]

P&G, which produce such things as Tide, Pampers and the rest, have very brilliantly been presenting commercials during the Olympics glorifying moms (i.e., saluting the mothers of all these athletes).

Yes, they're commercials meant to manipulate, and they've been shamelessly soppy--and using a gimme come to that (just say the word "mom" and people can get all misty-eyed. These are not subtle commercials). But as a connoisseur of commercials I've been pretty amazed by them.

Check this one out.

 

[trysail]

The people at Proctor are no dummies. If you are interested in consumer products, following the completion of your studies at the business school located on the Charles or the one adjacent to the Schuylkill or the one in Albermarle or the one in Palo Alto or New Haven or Chapel Hill or Hanover or Lausanne, you then report to the boot camp located in Cincinnati. It's not unlikely that you'll spend the first couple of months restocking Wal-Mart's shelves with Ivory Soap or Tampax or deodorant. The company is a well-known finishing school. If you liked life in the United States Army, you'll love life at P&G.

http://www.pg.com/en_US/brands/all_brands.shtml

 

[sr71plt]

P&G, which produce such things as Tide, Pampers and the rest, have very brilliantly been presenting commercials during the Olympics glorifying moms (i.e., saluting the mothers of all these athletes).

Yes, they're commercials meant to manipulate, and they've been shamelessly soppy--and using a gimme come to that (just say the word "mom" and people can get all misty-eyed. These are not subtle commercials). But as a connoisseur of commercials I've been pretty amazed by them.

Check this one out.

They're quite good. I sense a Canadian skater one coming up. (Maybe two, as one of the woman women has a mother fighting through cancer.)

 

[rgraham666]

That woman's mother died a couple of days ago.

I wonder if the next Marilyn Chambers will emerge from one of these commercials. Ivory Snow laundry detergent was a Proctor & Gamble product as I recall.

 

[3113]

The people at Proctor are no dummies. If you are interested in consumer products...

Not in the least. I'm a writer. I'm fascinated by commercials as it is their job to tell a story--and make a powerful point with it--in 30-60 seconds. A good commercial will get the most out of every one of those seconds--very like good poetry gets the most out of every syllable, not wasting a letter.

Commercials interest me. Consumer products...meh. I'm interested in them only if they've got great packaging. That, too, is an art form.

 

[trysail]

The people at Proctor are no dummies. If you are interested in consumer products, following the completion of your studies at the business school located on the Charles or the one adjacent to the Schuylkill or the one in Albermarle or the one in Palo Alto or New Haven or Chapel Hill or Hanover or Lausanne, you then report to the boot camp located in Cincinnati. It's not unlikely that you'll spend the first couple of months restocking Wal-Mart's shelves with Ivory Soap or Tampax or deodorant. The company is a well-known finishing school. If you liked life in the United States Army, you'll love life at P&G.

http://www.pg.com/en_US/brands/all_brands.shtml

Not in the least. I'm a writer. I'm fascinated by commercials as it is their job to tell a story--and make a powerful point with it--in 30-60 seconds. A good commercial will get the most out of every one of those seconds--very like good poetry gets the most out of every syllable, not wasting a letter.

Commercials interest me. Consumer products...meh. I'm interested in them only if they've got great packaging. That, too, is an art form.

The "you" above was not singular but was clearly intended as a generic, plural "you." I confess some surprise that it was read otherwise.


Brand managers at Proctor are at the acme of their profession and are expert at maximizing dollars extracted from consumers.


Viewing the methods employed ( essentially emotional manipulation ) to hawk what are essentially commodities at premium prices as a form of snake oil sales, I see advertisements as nothing more than the equivalent of noise that accompanies the perpetual war between sellers and buyers.


There is no doubt some cleverness is required. Those commercials are, without doubt, "focus-grouped" and "touchy-feelied" to death before they ever see the light of day. You have seen me use my neologism before to describe those whose behavior has been affected by the Machiavellian manipulation; I describe them as having been "Spielberged."


A rational buyer ignores them— emotion being, of course, the enemy of the rational buyer.

 

[sr71plt]

As a writer also, I think the commercials are clever and well done. I'll leave all of the angst "the world is a pile of shit and I'm ready for a straightjacket" pontificating to Trysail.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

As a trained classical musician, my favorite is the GE take off on Beethoven. "Say ahh."

 

[trysail]

As a writer also, I think the commercials are clever and well done. I'll leave all of the angst "the world is a pile of shit and I'm ready for a straightjacket" pontificating to Trysail.

Your boring predictability is mildly amusing; go fix your numerous spelling and grammatical errors.

 

[sr71plt]

Your boring predictability is mildly amusing; go fix your numerous spelling and grammatical errors.

Ummm, OK. In turn, you might post a story to this Web site more than once every four years to try to justify using the Author's Hangout as an irrelevant topic bully pulpit writ in those silly big green letters. 'Cause otherwise, you know, that's sort of parasitic of you.