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There are very few things that can suprise me as far as commercials. For one thing, I hardly watch them any more. It helps that I only have broadcast channels, and anything I borrow on tape I can fast forward through. I guess it’s because people have tried for so long to surprise us and catch our attention that it grosses me out more than surprises me.
However, this did surprise me, but only because someone stopped an appauling ad from showing. Kim Cattrall, pictured right, was in an ad which was supposed to be selling Nissan cars– instead it was (you guessed it) selling sex. The whole ad was all about her experience in the car making allusions to an intimate liason. Totally unappropriate, but Nissan thought it could get away with it in New Zealand before people complained and took it off the air.
Three things I’d like to bring to light about this:
- Nissan accomplished its mission. It got its name mentioned. There’s a saying “no publicity is bad publicity.” Sure, they may take some heat from us family oriented people, but their name’s out there, and judging by the popularity of this woman (I bet there’s a YouTube out there with the whole content) she’ll probably sell a lot of cars even with the ad no longer playing.
- It’s too late to protect innocence or to wait until something happens to respond. We need some kind of preemptive measures to keep these people in line. Obviously converting them to Christianity would help, but another thing that could help is to choose a brand of car and direct our business there exclusively– not in the form of a boycott, but more along the lines of trying to get someone that would cater to families instead of to horomone charged boys.
- This is a case of the envelope getting pushed too far, but wait a year or so and this will be considered passe. They got a slap on the wrist for this action, but all of TV will be here in just a little while. Think of the garden shampoo or Overstock.com and their sexual inuendos.
