Mr. T, Heinz, and sock puppets — TV at its finest

On the homo front …

In just the last month or so, two television ads with queer subtexts have been pulled — one for being too gay, and one for being too anti-gay.

If you haven’t seen the pulled Heinz commercial, it features a family in which the “mom” has been replaced by a New York deli guy. The commercial isn’t actually even very gay, except for that the two men in it do kiss. (I might not be making my argument very well … the fact that “mom” is the deli guy is the visual gag, what makes the joke read. The deli guy is not intended to be an actual gay man in his home. Watch the clip, and this will make much more sense.)

The flip side of the coin is the Mr. T Snickers commercial, which features Mr. T shooting a “prissy power-walker” with Snickers bars and exhorting him to “run like a real man.”

To my mind, both commercials “read” on an advertising level — yes, I am now hungry for a Snickers bar with a side of mayo — in that they both incorporate the element of surprise (vital to humor), and they both use the video medium in an effective way.

However, the relevant question in terms of this blog is: what does this have to do with people who are marketing small businesses? How do these examples of corporate advertising influence the boundaries of small-business marketing, and what do they tell us about the societies in which we live? What do their production, banning, and availability on YouTube mean in this marketing milieu? Can small businesses do things (in terms of advertising that pushes boundaries, and that could be read as offensive and off-putting) that larger businesses can’t? Is using a breadth of narratives to promote goods and services valuable to small business? Is breadth of narrative counter-intuitive to the kind of micro-niching that small businesses need to thrive? Is the use of potentially-offputting visual humor too risky for a small business? Or is pushing edges and boundaries of acceptability (which is, really, the basis of all humor) vital to the long-term survival of a small business?

I’m much less ambivalent about BoingBoing’s use of sock puppets to explore the free market economy, but I’m curious as to why the producers fail to mention corporate welfare in the clip. Is corporate welfare too sophisticated for sock puppets? You be the judge.

If You’re Not Doing Art…

…you’re not evolving. The New York Times told me so, and they’ve never misled me. Except on that whole Iraq thing.