“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
That’s a famous quote attributed to pioneering marketer John Wanamaker when talking about the value of advertising. It’s as true today as it ever was.
On the other hand, those wise people who spend their money on getting news stories placed will always get the most bang for their buck. News has credibility. Advertising rarely does.
Over and over again people watch Super Bowl commercials, which run about $4.5 million per 30 seconds, and mutter, “Well, that was wasted money!!” If the viewer takes a bathroom break during your commercial it is literally flushing away your message.
Many folks wish they were taking a bathroom break instead of viewing Sears latest “When Life Happens” commercial. It opens with bratty, out-of-control kid running through a store in a Superman cape while his parents are trying to talk to a salesperson. They all act like he is just being cute. He isn’t.
Then the scene changes where the brat starts running around the house in a Superman costume. When he gets it dirty his mom washes it in a Sears Kenmore washing machine.
But in the next shot the kid sees the open dishwasher door and he jumps on. It breaks off its hinges.
A short while later a Sears repairman shows up and fixes the broken door (probably to the tune of $200!). The mom lovingly rubs her brat’s hair and the commercial ends with the kid saluting the repairman and the repairman saluting back.
What a darling little boy!!
The responses to the commercial have overwhelmingly negative. Social media feedback has run along the lines of:
“When life happens…” is not some undisciplined, idiot kid ramped up on sugar, running around the house like a maniac,” noted Mitch Hagan on YouTube. “Maybe if that kid has his ass kicked so hard it came out of his mouth every now and then he wouldn’t be jumping on the freaking dishwasher door. I REALLY hate this commercial. REALLY. HATE.
“I don’t know who I was to smack more, the kid, his idiot mother, or the ad genius who came up with this PoS commercial.”
Janet Brand noted on Facebook: ”I despise that commercial - the kids needs his butt kicked!”
“My jaw dropped when I saw this commercial,” noted a person on a site that analyzes commercials (LINK) “A child jumping on a dishwasher door is not ‘life happening.’ This is a kid out of control. The worst commercial ever!!!”
It seems as if the goal of the commercial was to get people talking about how to raise a brat, then Sears has succeeded. If the goal was to try and help sell Sears products then it really missed the mark.
It’s no wonder Sears (owned by Kmart) has slumped from being the number one retailer in the country to fighting for its survival today.
It’s too bad no one in the executive wing had the nerve to ask the ad agency folks, “How exactly is this going to help us sell dishwashers?”
