It’s great to be recognized. Dads are often un represented in advertising and television. If a dad is represented all too often he’s uncaring, aloof or flat out stupid. Real life stay at home dads are guilty of playing into this stereotype too. Sometimes an over the top representation of a dad is funny, sometimes not so much-it depends on the products and how well the spot is done.
The latest campaign from Huggies caught my attention. It starts out with a group of dads and their young babies watching TV. The voice over goes something like this “To prove Huggies diapers can handle anything, we put them to the ultimate test-Dads, alone with their babies watching the game. Can the leaks stay locked through a forced overtime?”
I love to see dads in commercials, but the wording “put them to the ultimate test-dads” irked me just a little bit. I realize most dads do not stay at home with their children. For that moment, saying that a dad taking care of their child was the ‘ultimate test’ was akin to a business saying that they needed to run efficiently because a mom was coming to work there.
How is a dad the ‘ultimate test’ for proving that a diaper can work efficiently? Any situation where the dad is not changing the diaper has a problem and that mom needs to confront it ASAP. It’s just a diaper, smelly and wiggly at times, but that’s it. Dads won’t swing the baby around the room by the diaper; they’ll take it off and put a clean one on. Rather than being an ‘ultimate test’, it’s a basic thing that dads need to do in order to make parenting work as efficiently as it should.
I thought about the spot again and realized I was making too much of it.
By visiting the Huggies Facebook page I discovered that the rest of the spots were more direct and effective. Here’s a link to the spot and complete copy: “To prove Huggies diapers can handle anything, we put them to the ultimate test-Dads, alone with their babies, at naptime after a very full feeding. Can the leaks stay locked through a long sleep induced slumber? (‘no leaks here’ one of the dads is over heard saying as two dads fist bump)
The dads live in a house for five days taking care of the kids while the moms get pampered during that time. As a dad who doesn’t stay at home with the kids this would be a treat. Likewise, to a stay at home mom, getting out of the home-without the kids is invigorating and liberating. When my wife saw the spots she loved both of them, especially the second one that had babies playing and explained the five day house stay.
It’s all relative. Prior to being a stay at home dad I never liked it when fringe groups would complain about trivial things. Ouch. My own standards came back to correct my newfound outsider ‘dad’ status as a stay-at-home dad. It’s an inner ‘dad’ conflict and we all win as long as the dads are involved, active and loving in our kids’ life.
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Did you see the Clorox commercial Trey? THAT is the first one I’ve seen that seems to have totally got it right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMAtkMFqjJQ&feature=pyv
I have not seen that spot and you are correct, it’s the best one yet.
When I saw the Huggies ad, I hollered a WHOOP! Although they were a bunch of guys hanging around watching football (cliche), I was so excited that they were holding their kids, taking care of the, engaging them! It was fantastic! I told my wife “Look, an involved daddy commercial!”
Now, if we could just get past the obvious need to have sports play into all men’s advertizing (some of us could care less about sports) and show dads being more active in the parenting (not babysitting), I will be ecstatic!
Also, lets get some cleaning product ads aimed at husbands. I’m the one who cleans and I’m the one who buy the damn things!
The issue I have is their Facebook campaign. For those of us who haven’t seen the ad, there is no explanation of the commercials. It basically says, “Dads leave diapers on too long. Let’s put our diapers to the ultimate test: Dad”. NO mention of the commercials, NO links to view the spots online, JUST a contest to encourage fathers to give their children diaper rash? Please, we deserve better. I have to disagree with this one buddy. Huggies doesn’t feature dads anywhere on its website (unlike Pampers), and this campaign is (at least the Facebook part) poorly executed.
I agree with you on the disconnect, they didn’t explain what they’re doing well enough. A commenter on FB also pointed out that if a car company were going to have women driving trucks “to put them to the ultimate test”, it would be called out immediately.
While I’m not personally offended. What would happen if Mikita put out an ad giving a drill the “woman test”… it would be pulled quickly and be labeled sexist.
Yikes, another good point that is akin to a “woman driving” spot.
I think the implication that a dad is too stupid or self-absorbed to care to change a diaper for however long a football game lasts is offensive. I think your third sentence hit the nail on the head. Our society undervalues fathers, and in turn we turn out too many young men who will create children and not be fathers to them.