A writer for Advertising Age has dubbed the Snickers ad homophobic, and he points out that the agency responsible has a history of creating this kind of incendiary work.Â
This adds an interesting dimension to the discussion we had last week.Â
 A writer for Advertising Age has dubbed the Snickers ad homophobic, and he points out that the agency responsible has a history of creating this kind of incendiary work.Â
This adds an interesting dimension to the discussion we had last week.Â
© 2008 The Critical Condition — Cutline by Chris Pearson — Site by Art Meets Commerce
2 responses so far ↓
1 Collin H. // Jul 21, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Interesting. The discourse in the comments section closely mirrors the points we made over here.
I didn’t know that the ad company has a history of making ads like this, and that definitely raises my eyebrow a bit higher than it was before. Are they deliberately trying to passive aggressively gaybash, or are they really just that colossally stupid?
…wait, can I even turn “passive aggressive” into an adverb? Should it be “passively aggressively?” Argh.
Stupid grammar issues aside, I’m leaning towards the latter because a massive conspiracy to kinda, maybe make fun of gay-speedwalker-mechanic-fairy-men just seems too ridiculous to be a sinister ploy by e-e-e-evil corporations.
2 DAB // Jul 23, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I think they’ve bought into their name a little too much. (Exploring all aspects of their brand, I guess.) Anyone who claims this is just “anti-nerd” and not anti-gay isn’t actually listening to the words. Mr T isn’t berating him for being too smart. Or even, for that matter, being unathletic. He’s berating him for being a “disgrace to the man race.” With the explicit message that his race-walking doesn’t appear “manly” enough.
But instead of overtly targeting same-sex attraction (as their first anti-homo ad did), they’ve decided to take a different tack by targeting “anti-masculinity.” Unfortunately, that’s much the same tack that most gay bashers take, too, and bashings occur because someone is only perceived as gay just as they do when someone is actually gay.
But for some reason, they’ve got a client brief that says “Snickers should equal masculinity for our target audience,” and the only thing they can do (since no one will believe truly healthy, athletic people would be eating Snickers; their previous campaigns have even tried that) is to take on whatever they deem “unmasculine.”
I guess it’s the opposite of the A&F campaign. Or, in other words, “ugly.”
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