Certain products are sold with commercials that follow a predicatable sort of script. Beer is sold by happy party goers, sports cars by idjits with lead feet and unoccupied roads. And anti-animal-cruelty organizations beg for donations by showing slow-mo videos of sad (typically damaged) animals with a sad soundtrack. Well, as if this ad from the ASPCA wasn’t bad enough, the Humane Society of the US has decided to step it up a notch in a new commercial by adding large-font “thought bubble” quotes along with the sad critters. And of course, the “thoughts” the critters are expressing are not “hey, thanks for your help” or “won’t you please donate.”
Oh, no. Not even a little bit.
And then to top it off, they tack on this little nugget of joy:
Now, unless I really miss my guess, the basic purpose of these ads is to make people not only want to donate to the Humane Society, but to actually get off their butts and do it. But this ad does not have that effect on me. Instead, it makes want to grab a baseball bat and start whacking the crap out of things and people… starting with the damned television, progressing to the nearest animal abuser, moving on to the people who dreamed up this ad, and finally finishing with the executives of PETA (not because they were involved with this ad, but just because they suck so very, very much).
As might be guessable based on the “cat” postings I’ve made, I’ve a fondness for critters such as these. My oldest cat Koshka came from a rescue shelter, and was an abused cat herself (she still has numerous relatively serious psychomologimical issues… she recognizes weapons like knives and firearms, and runs away in stark terror). So you’d think that I would be the precise target audience. But if the result is not me diving for my checkbook, but instead diving for the remote control to turn the channel to something more cheerful like the latest episode of “House” or “Johnny Got His Gun,” I can’t help but think someone might’ve miscalculated.
Gah. It was bad enough when it was fictional.
10 Responses to “Is this *really* the reaction they were looking for???”
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Glad I’m not the only one. It wasn’t this one, but I first saw a commercial like this several months ago and just stared at the TV with my mouth open. The second time I saw it, the rage started building. Had to change the channel the third time.
> I first saw a commercial like this several months ago and just stared at the TV with my mouth open.
In trying to find YouTube links to the specific commercial, I spent an annoying period of time surfing the net (my initial searches on youTube failed because I misremembered the one line as “Am I going to die today”). Seems a lot of people are talking about this and similar ads… and talking about how they burst into tears when they see it. But I’m not seeing many people say their wallets and checkbooks burst open after seeing the commercial.
So is it a good idea to upset vast numbers of people for little practical benefit?
These ads are running heavily on CMT and other country music oriented channels, and drawing exactly the OPPOSITE reaction that PETA thought they would.
My favorite part? PETA kills more animals than county/municipality run animal shelters do, and they are being prosecuted in several states for improperly dumping animal remains in municipal waste dumps.
Remember their ads from a few months ago? About shooting wolves from aircraft? The largest response they received on those was requests for information on how to arrange such hunting trips and how much do they cost!
My cat was singularly unimpressed by that commercial, and batted at the remote.
We got some foreclosures-r-us commercial instead.
Damn, he is one smart cat.
I had the same reaction when I saw it: manly tears. I may be a hard-assed, two-fisted, hard-drinking writer and comic book artist on the outside, but I am a bag of runny creamed potatoes inside when it comes to animals* and kids (even the ugly ones). Human suffering doesn’t affect me as strongly, because most people frankly deserve what they get (myself included); but he thought of an innocent or helpless creature being tormented or neglected enrages me. BIG THING HURT SMALL THING makes me want to hurt Big Thing. Glad it’s not just me.
* Except for harmful insects, sea life, and so forth. I have little sympathy for bloodsucking bugs, poisonous spiders, jellyfish, etc.
Nat. Geo.’s show about Rescue Ink: http://www.rescueink.org/
Very much of the “Pick on someone your own size” with a healthy dose of “God help you if we catch you doing some of this shit!”
> Rescue Ink
I’ve never seen that. I got kinda burned out on such shows with the various “Animal Cops” series… it was a combination of being Just Too Depressing, and *not* getting the satisfaction of seeing the villains getting their asses handed to ’em. At least on “Cops” you get to see the dumbasses getting thumped, Tasered, peppersprayed and outright shot. On “Animal Cops,” they get a summons. Bleah.
> Human suffering doesn’t affect me as strongly, because most people frankly deserve what they get
Perhaps not at the individual level, but in the larger scheme there’s truth there. The reason why most people who get regularly screwed over are gettign screwed over is because their culture – Third World dirtholes, Muslimocracies, generational welfare staters, Detroit – sucks. And the reason why a persons culture sucks rarely ahs anything to do with distant influences or natural disasters… it’s because the people themselves suck.
But animals… for the most part they just do what they do. If you get mauled by a bear, the cause-and-effect leading up to that is probably pretty self-apparent. But it takes humans (and, as it turns out, chimps) to enact truly awful, nasty behavior. A critter might eat you, but it’s unlikely to torture you unnecessarily.
Human suffering through personal actions/inaction affects me very little. I have seen far too many examples of the barbarity with which people routinely treat each other, and how appallingly often the “victims” just sit there and take it.
Children and animals are a different matter, entirely. They have only the option of running away, or their tormentors can be killed, ending the suffering being inflicted upon said children/animals.
For people who live in their minds, crap like this is equivalent to a salesman breaking down your door and spray painting his advert on your living room walls. It violates your privacy, and your personal space.
I intensely dislike being manipulated, for any purpose. I expect most individualists feel the same way.
[…] a followup to THIS bit of “Television to shoot yourself by,” tonight I watched “Pedigree Dogs […]