Lowe’s Public Relations Mess over “All-American Muslim”

Posted on December 12, 2011 at 11:31 am

“All-American Muslim” is a TLC reality show about five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan. According to TLC, “Each episode offers an intimate look at the customs and celebrations, misconceptions and conflicts these families face outside and within their own community.” The hardware and home improvement chain Lowe’s, one of the advertisers originally supporting the show, has cancelled its commercials because after the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program is “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.” They are urging all advertisers to drop their affiliation with the series.

My friend Christian Toto thoughtfully reviewed “All-American Muslim” for the conservative website Big Hollywood and did not find what the FFA charged:

At times, the show feels like an extended public relations video for hardworking Muslims to show their fellow citizens they have nothing to fear. But “All-American Muslim” is honest enough about some less flattering components of the Islamic faith to keep our respect. And watching an Irish-Catholic family merge peacefully with a Muslim clan reminds us our differences truly can make us stronger – no more how treacly that might sound.

What’s more, “Muslim” makes the case that American culture can have a positive effect on a religion which has festered in some repressive societies. The families of “All-American Muslim” have incorporated the best of their own religion with their American roots.

In responding to the shrill attack from a small group of activists to try to avoid controversy, Lowe’s has only made it worse. A state senator from California has called for them to apologize for what he calls “naked religious bigotry.” Music executive, social activist, founder of a center for inter-racial and interfaith harmony (and brother of a pastor) Russell Simmons has said, “this is the kind of hate that tears this country apart.”

Lowe’s response: “Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lightning rod for many of those views,” the statement said. “As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.”

As a Muslim poster wrote on Facebook, even Muslims who did not care for the show will watch it now. In attempting to silence the program, the FFA has only generated more interest and support for it. In attempting to appease one group of extremists, Lowe’s has infuriated a broader group and found itself better known at this moment for the controversy than for its products and services. A shame that all of this was generated from a television program intended to promote tolerance and understanding.

Becoming Santa: Tonight on OWN

Posted on December 8, 2011 at 6:24 pm

Hank Stuever has an excellent piece in today’s Washington Post that addresses an issue that has really been bugging me. But first, he recommends a documentary premiering tonight on Oprah’s OWN station called “Becoming Santa.” It is the story of Jack Sanderson.

Sanderson, a single Los Angeles man in his mid-40s, decides to learn everything he can about the men who dress as Santa Claus every November and December to work in malls or at other paying gigs or who volunteer for charity appearances. While going through old family photos, Sanderson discovers a picture of his recently deceased father dressed as Santa Claus, taken not long after the death of Sanderson’s mother. Was his father finding some mysterious comfort in donning the red suit and white beard? Would doing so help Sanderson cope with his own feelings of loss and mortality?

Santas and historians provide background as Sanderson attends Santa school, rings a bell on a street corner, listens to children’s wishes, and leads a parade. Stuever likes the show a lot.

“Becoming Santa” would have quickly become hokey and glib in someone else’s hands, but Myers and Sanderson approach the project with an earnest and searching tone. The result is both happy and melancholy, and admirably real, as we learn more about the icon’s complicated history — a mashup of religion, superstition and marketing. The act of being Santa is far from perfect, Sanderson discovers, but something about it remains magical. “Becoming Santa” is filled with a fresh take on hope.

What I especially like about Stuever’s piece is the way he contrasts the sincerity of this film with the ugliness of some of the Christmas shopping ads on television this season. Ever since those awful Black Friday ads with the woman in training for shopping at Target it has seemed to me that commercials have been harsher than usual and off-key with current economic conditions and sensibilities.

Best Buy, in particular, is running a terribly callous series of commercials called “Game On, Santa,” in which obsessed female shoppers purchase the gifts that their loved ones really want at Best Buy and then wait up on Christmas Eve to accost Santa Claus in their living rooms and gloat that they’ve already beat him to the punch. In your face, you outdated fat man with your outdated presents!

“Awk-ward,” a woman mock-hisses at a baffled, sweet Santa caught standing at her tree, ready to lay out his gifts to her family. She points out that she’s already filled her children’s stockings with Best Buy junk, offering him a chance to fill her dog’s stocking instead. No one can watch this ad and feel at all good about its message, or about a society that would become so fixated on transactions that it viciously turns on Santa.

His description of these and other commercials in the context of this program’s sweet reminder that playing Santa can keep alive the spirit of giving is well worth reading.

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Classic Commercial: Jim Henson for American Express

Posted on November 25, 2011 at 8:00 am

The late Jim Henson, founder of The Muppets, made this adorable commercial as a part of the American Express “Do You Know Me?” series of ads from the early 1980’s.

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Tide Commercial Gets It Wrong About Moms, Daughters, and Gender Roles

Posted on October 7, 2011 at 3:42 pm

I try to maintain a sense of humor about ads, but I really do not like the new series of commercials for Tide with people explaining how they get their clothes dirty. I know they are intended to be funny but I find them annoying and the one with the “girly” mom complaining about her cargo-pants-wearing daughter really bugged me. So I was very pleased to see a very thoughtful commentary on the Tide ad from Lauren R. of Representing America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9LTRbWsGOI&feature=player_embedded

Tide may be making fun of this stereotypical perfectionist housewife. The elaborately decorated living room, the pink cardigan, sensible haircut; it all fits. Is this commercial trying to present satire? If so, I don’t think that they were obvious enough about doing so.

The satire presented is also sexist in its own way. The mother is portrayed as uptight, reserved, and repressed to the point of (maybe?) being humorous….Either way you look at it, this ad is probably sending the wrong message.

Who are they making fun of here? The little girl in the cargo pants who likes to get dirty or the mother who wants her to wear pink? Either way, it is definitely sending the wrong message.

USA Today on New Techniques in Marketing to Kids

Posted on August 15, 2011 at 3:55 pm

USA Today has an important article on new technologies for marketing to kids.

With the use of new, kid-enchanting technologies, are savvy marketers gaining the upper hand on parents? Are toy marketers such as Ganz, food marketers such as McDonald’s and kid-coddling apparel retailers such as 77kids by American Eagle too eager to target kids?

At stake: $1.12 trillion. That’s the amount that kids influenced last year in overall family spending, says James McNeal, a kid marketing consultant and author of Kids as Consumers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children. “Up to age 16, kids are determining most expenditures in the household,” he says. “This is very attractive to marketers.”

Children who play on websites like Webkinz are bombarded by ads. The article follows one girl who repeatedly clicks on an ad for Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer, not because she has any interest in the film but because clicking on the link is the way she earns accessories for her virtual characters.

“We occasionally introduce limited-time promotions so that our Webkinz World members can enjoy fun, unique activities and events,” says Susan McVeigh, a Ganz spokeswoman.

That corporate doublespeak is appalling. The purpose of these “limited-time promotions” is so that children can be targeted for ads, and this is all within the context of a site that is itself an enormous interactive ad for Ganz. Parents should be aware of the new avenues for trying to sell to kids and should have continuing conversations with children and tweens about the way that marketing is designed to make them think they want things that are not really important. Or, in the case of the “Judy Moody” movie, to see movies that ARE a bummer.