Saturday, February 16, 2008

Dad's...umm...working late?

A couple of months ago I saw a KFC ad on TV (I couldn't find it on youtube) that struck me by surprise. I got pretty mad after watching it actually. It was the typical KFC family value meal commercial. However, the family was black...and missing a father. I don't recall having seen any other KFC commercials sans father. So I thought of course they're targeting black single mothers. Ad agencies are bad. We know this. There are plenty of racists, sexist, etc. commercials on the market or those that target groups that they either shouldn't be targeting or are going about it in the wrong way. But this was painstakingly obvious. Black family. No father. Really KFC? I know people think, well maybe he was working late or something like that. But then that would leave Americans to assume that a black male had a job and that's not good for anyone. And since when do commercials need a back story to be TV appropriate. If we're going to be real about things in commercials, then why not be really real. Why not have 13 yr olds smoking cigarettes? Why not have obese people chilling at McDonald's? I'm not saying stop targeting groups. I'm saying try to be a little less obvious. Nobody was complaining when a couple of years ago McDonald's all of a sudden had an unusual amount of black people in commercials with hip hop blaring in the background. Discreteness. Try it.

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