Speed Screed: Exploiting Kids

You know, few things irritate me more than the use of children in commercials, particularly babies. This is the sort of genius advertising that comes from people following a line of thought like this:

“Everyone likes babies, since they’re cute. So how can I use this? Hmmm….I know! I’ll make this little baby explain to the watchers that this online investment company is the best in a completely mismatched voice, and then I’ll make him throw up on the keyboard, and everyone will go, ‘Awwwww!’ Brilliant!”

It might work on a few dopes whose brains shut down when they see a moderately cute baby, but for practically everyone else, they’ll just be annoyed that this poor kid is being forced to hock some shoddy product and he’s not even aware of it. To me its simply shameless exploitation of little kids.

You may also have seen that Target commercial where some kids are putting on a Christmas play and it ends with a stupid rhyme saying that Target is the best place to save for the holidays. The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. First of all, I know that Christmas is pretty much about commercialism, but cheesy holiday plays put on by second-graders are not. No genuine play is going to include an overt advertisement for Target unless they sponsored the entire thing, and even if they did, it would cause spontaneous revulsion in the audience when they realized that Target’s only goal was to capitalize on the adorableness of the players to hock its wares.

I know I’m cynical, but this is not merely needless cynicism. This is simple logic. These sorts of ad campaigns rely on their audiences being more dimwitted than even I’m willing to believe. I can understand that certain people might enjoy the “cuteness” of the commercial, but at the same time I doubt that they would therefore make any sort of leap to purchase the thing advertised.

The “dancing baby” commercials that I think Blockbuster did maybe a decade ago were the worst. Another grievous miscalculation of what people would find entertaining and cute, whereas the end result was simply something creepy and pointless. Ultimately, unless you have kids genuinely acting like kids, the commercial is going to seem contrived and fall flat.

But that doesn’t seem to stop them from trying. Advertisements suck these days.