Major corporations seem more interested in advertising images of their target demographic than their actual products these days, which means we’re bound to see (and praise!) same-sex couples doing more than just driving Chevrolet cars, reading Amazon Kindles and sitting on Crate & Barrel couches in the coming years.
This week: multiracial and same-sex parents eat Honey Maid graham crackers in a new advertisement circulating the web.
Honey Maid is the latest company on the “diversity bandwagon,” broadly buying ad slots across multiple TV networks to show their 30-second spot featuring gay and multiracial consumers who like eating graham crackers.
Call me cynical, but I’m ready for the day when diverse families just become the norm in advertising without the ensuing media circus carefully designed to spike sales.
How about we take this to the next level?
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From an article from USA Today, praising the new ad:
In one 30-second Honey Maid ad, viewers will see everything from a same-sex couple bottle-feeding their son to an interracial couple and their three kids holding hands. The ad also features a Hispanic mother and an African-American father with their three mixed-race children. And there’s even a father covered in body tattoos. This is not some shockvertisement for Benetton. It’s an ad for one of America’s oldest and most familiar brands. The people in it are not actors, but real families. The message of the ad: These are wholesome families enjoying wholesome snacks.
“Shockvertisement for Benetton”?? A Hispanic mother and African-American father, a “father covered in body tattoos” and a gay couple is even remotely considered “shockvertisement”?
The new ads are pushing Honey Maid’s new “ThisIsWholesome” campaign on Twitter. The campaign has received generally favorable reviews and — don’t get me wrong, I think the sentiment is beautiful — a lot of pomp and circumstance.
If you ask me, an ad like this would have been awesome two years ago; pioneering ten years ago. But are we supposed to hand out awards and lay down praise for every future company that decides to get with the program? This ad would be impressive if it read more ‘Look at our graham crackers in the hands of all these great people’ instead of ‘Look at all these incredibly different and shocking people doing the same things you love to do. Aren’t we amazing and incredibly brave for hiring them?’
Great job, Honey Maid. Call me when multiracial, “alternative,” and same-sex couples appear in your advertisements without the ridiculous assertion that it’s some kind of brave marketing strategy.
Ron Jackson
Nice. I hope it makes a few bigoted heads explode.
tardis
Of course we should! We’re at the beginning of the fight for equality.
Meanwhile back at One Million Moms, they type away furiously on the internet, boycotting Honey Maid. Nobody listens. They do it anyway.
Does One Million Mom hate their gay children?
Anywho, hats off for Honey Maid.
DCFarmboi
They are just doing it to sell you shit you don’t need. They would cheat you if they could.
MK Ultra
@DCFarmboi: Well, they definitely are doing it for the profit. But that doesn’t change the fact that adding gay people and families into these commercials familiarizes a large audience with the concept and makes it less abstract and scary/offensive to them.
That’s definitely the kind of exposure the LGBT community needs, so I say it’s a win/win situation.
unclemike
Yes, we can stop praising these companies as soon as other people stop complaining to them.
Until then…
balehead
But then GLAAD and HRC would be out of jobs…..ooops….
Goforit
@balehead: I for one would love to see the day when GLAAD and HRC are no longer necessary. Unfortunately it is troglodytes such as yourself that tend to pop out the most offspring and then proceed to indoctrinate them in your bigoted ways. So I suspect that we will always be in need of these groups and others like them to fight for the equal rights of ALL. Just go back under your rock. We are not amused or interested.
Cam
“Call me cynical, but I’m ready for the day when diverse families just become the norm in advertising without the ensuing media circus carefully designed to spike sales.”
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I get what the author is saying here, but the only reason I think we need to keep pointing it out. Is that when we are silent nothing changes. We were quiet when groups like HRC were demanding gays shut up and not bother democrats because they were our friends. We got nothing. As soon as we started yelling at them, suddenly they finally moved on our rights.
Pointing out when a company like Honey Made does something like this makes it more obvious that others aren’t. If we say nothing, then there is no reason for them to do it. It may be cynical but so what, Lets say a company stops discriminating against racial minorities because it is good business, or they do it because it is the right thing to do. Either way, they’ve stopped discriminating.