I am curious what sort of ads and commercials folks are seeing in their areas? In Easton, PA, our local radio is playing ads submitted from local businesses, and they are fascinatingly unusual. Some sound so defeated, some are patriotic (join the forces working for Amazon!), some are attempts at normalcy.
Thoughts? Sources?
Hi Carolyn! I’ve also been thinking about this a lot lately. Most of the commercials I’ve seen are on TV, so that might be a bit different than your experiences. I’ve noticed that commercials seem to be some combination of a somber seriousness (“we know things are hard right now…”), encouraging (“it won’t always been like this”), and what the company is doing (“no payments for three months” – that’s primarily car commercials). Some other commercials seem more normal, but then mention the restaurant is doing takeout, or the plumber company can do no-contact appointments. (I recently saw a ShamWow ad that looked completely normal until it ended with a special offer that includes a machine-washable ShamWow mask)
My feelings about commercials have become increasingly mixed. Initially, it was weird seeing ads about March Madness sales after March Madness had been cancelled and Carleton had gone remote. Of course commercials began to catch up, but now I’m honestly pretty tired of pandemic-related commercials. When I’m watching TV, I don’t really want to be constantly reminded about how the world seems to be falling apart. But then perhaps seeing commercials that act as if everything is normal also reminds me about the pandemic. But that’s mainly framed by my impulse at this point to escape.
I also sometimes wonder if I’m getting too cynical when I see ads from bigger companies about what they are doing, and how meaningful that is or if they are just doing it for PR. There’s this Pringles commercial (I think it was Pringles, but now I can’t find anything online) I’ve seen a couple times and the gist of that one is basically, “all these other companies are asking you to do stuff to help others, but we’re not going to do that. So let us tell you what we are doing instead.” So it seems to be criticizing other companies for their ads, but then are just touting what they are doing?
What have other people experienced? And what do you think about the different commercials?