Your Husband: Slightly Dumber Than a Dog
Comedian Sarah Haskins is back with another Target Women video at Current TV that skewers gender-based advertising clichés—this time it's the Doofy Husband. "Being a woman isn't easy," she says in a mock serious tone. "We work, we take care of the house, we raise children, and we do it all without a shred of help from those lumbering man-beasts known as husbands."
Cue a montage of hapless husbands: one man struggles to fry an egg; another uses a blender without first putting the cover on; yet another can't figure out how to activate the automatic air freshener (Hint: There's a button on its base).
"Makes me kind of sad," she continues. "I mean, remember what he was like in commercials before he was a husband? Just a fun single dude, driving his awesome car or motorcycle, serving beer to babes, tailgating with his bros and dancing up a storm. He was so cool. Then he met you and got married—now he's slightly dumber than a dog."
Among her other examples of the Doofy Husband:
- A man who frantically checks the calendar, believing he must have forgotten a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary, when his wife brings home steak for dinner.
- An apparent simpleton who wreaks havoc on his lawn by using the "wrong" weed killer without realizing the product also kills grass.
Your Marketing Inspiration is to consider what the cartoonish portrayal of inept husbands might actually say to an ad's target audience—wives. Because one female commenter at the Current TV post believes the true takeaway of such commercials is this: "[M]en are just regular happy-go-lucky guys and women are terrible and ruin all the fun."
More Inspiration:
Ted Mininni: Caving To Public Pressure
Jeanne Bliss: Would you buy from the Republicans or Democrats?
Galen De Young: Do Your PDFs Have Embedded Sharing Options?
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Comments
I love the Slowskys on the Comcast commercial. And...it further illustrates the point, the man turtle says to the wife turtle..."...why do you HATE fun?"
As a husband of 32 years who does ALL the cooking in our house, as well as half the housecleaning, the "funny funny" concept of doofy husband really turns my stomach.
Is this the price we pay for our fathers being chauvinistic pigs? (after all...all men are alike you know.) I consider the use of this concept to be serious brand damage.
Just like Brent, my husband gets angry with the "stupid husband" images in commercials. Both are right to be irate! (And my husband is a chef so he does all the cooking too.)
This article is great and should catch the attention of the next commercial producer who is considering the "doofy husband" as a star in his next campaign.
Everyone has ditzy moments - Mom's too! Stories can be funny without dumbing down people. It just takes a little extra thought to notch up a campaign. It's time to strategize for a few minutes more because people are getting tired of the dumb-ass portrayals.
Amen Jayna. Time for advertisers to wake up and smell the (emotionally mature) coffee.
It's lowest common denominator advertising. Kids advertisements often depict all grown-ups as goofballs, political ads depict the other party as incompetent, and ads directed at women depict men as clueless. Trying to build a relationship by bashing someone else is a negative method of trying to do something positive. It happens on the schoolyard all the time, and yes, it's very juvenile. Lazy advertising that relies on a negative gimmick is a bad strategy.