...don't even ignore 'em.
-- Samuel Goldwyn

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Why does this ad make me so mad?

You figure it out. "This is the Christmas card. And I thought I'd just put in a picture. And what we wrote on his gravestone...'Peace to our sweet boy...'" It's an apparently real mom, sitting in her suburban living room, shuffling through the pieces of paper on the coffee table before her. And then we go to a graphic, revealing that this as a spot for the American Heart Association. Setting aside that it provides only this one heartbreaking snippet of tragedy, and as an appeal for...what? Taking better care of your baby or he'll have a heart attack and die?...and ignoring the fact that you can't get this many runs of a "public service" TV spot on the air in such good time slots without spending a lot of money...other than that, why would this spot make me furious every time I see it? There are so many things happening in communications that I want to research and rant about...I don't have enough time to get to them all. And I've taken sort of a vow against curmudgeonry. Consider this a little relapse. For which I'm not apologizing.

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