A Super Sunday?
It will largely be remembered for being the day that the New York football Giants brought the "Evil Empire" of football to its knees. Eli Manning made one of the most improbable throws of all time, David Tyree made one of the most improbably catches of all time, and just like that, respect was restored to a once proud football city.
Now I can go into detail about the factors surrounding Super Bowl Sunday that make it the most watched annual television event. However, for any year that the 49ers are not in the Super Bowl, I know that people watch the game for one reason and one reason only: the commercials.
As I knew that I was going to be watching the Super Bowl for homework purposes this year, I watched the commercials with keen interest to see if I could ascertain anything about their rhetoric and therefore, their ethical implications.
What I found interesting about the Pepsi ad with Justin Timberlake was the line "that's not really that funny... it's childish and immature." While Pepsi didn't stoop as low as repeatedly browbeating their viewers with images of men with chopsticks up their noses (the first time was enough) they did choose to use almost every sight gag in trying to show how with every sip of Pepsi people get one step closer to Justin Timberlake music. What made the ad really hypocritical, and made Pepsi lose all credibility in my book was when Justin was magnetically pulled into a mailbox three times. As if watching a man have a mailbox rammed against his testicles once isn't enough, the exercise was repeated twice more for comedic effect.
While Pepsi's intended audience is probably the tween generation that still listens to JT's music, I just found it ironic that Pepsi established a standard for what was "childish and immature" and then proceeded to do everything possible that fit this definition. My only explanation is that Pepsi was marketing their promotion toward those people that are "childish and immature" and like someone getting hit in the balls because it's kind of funny.
Super Bowl advertising is risky business. Ad space during this year's game cost about $2.7 million for a 30 second spot. For that price, one better make sure that the message trying to be conveyed is done in an effective manner. Rhetoric better be clear and images better be precise.
The thing that I found interesting was that before the game quite a few of the commercials on Fox were trying to say how I needed something. Buy this car, go to this web-site, this product will change my world. During the game the message was one of trying to create the most memorable advertisement. In a classic game of one-upmanship millions of dollars were spent to try and entertain a culture.
The difficulty for me has to do with ethical implications. First off, I can't fathom spending not only 2.7 million dollars for an ad spot, but millions of dollars in production to make it. If all that money was put toward education, or ending poverty or hunger, what a step that would be. If Dell had used their money to support the fight against global AIDS instead of paying a load of cash to sell their laptop that kind of supports the Red campaign, that would be a step in the right direction.
As this is a class about ethical implications of rhetoric, my account of the Super Bowl wouldn't be complete without saying that they rhetoric wasn't used to sell the product. It was used to entertain people. Super Bowl Sunday is a day where millions of people get together and watch television to be entertained. After the game, we don't talk about the game, we talk about the ads. This exposure is what companies are hoping for. In a crazy mixed up way,we are the advertisers, and we are doing it for free. We are also the intended audience and we are being manipulated by companies who want us to subscribe to their culture of cool. All I can say is that they've gotten me. I know that next year at Super Bowl time I will be exactly right where I was this year at Super Bowl time: plopped in front of a television watching a football game for the ad spots.
