...has nothing whatever to do with pharmaceutical companies that try to use you and me as their shills to persuade physicians to prescribe their products (as I described in the preceding post), and everything to do with cat food.
I must tread carefully here as I know there are several lovers of cats among the readers of this blog. Let me be clear. I do not dislike cats. In fact, there are three of them -- Gracie, Smokey, and Bandit -- who live with people whose formative years were spent with Mrs. RWP and me, and I myself had a yellow cat we called Kitty (okay, we never settled on a name) during my own formative years. My problem is not with cats. My problem is with one particular cat food company's commercial.
THE SCENE: A woman is sitting on a large upholstered sofa, reading a book. A cat is sitting partly on the back of the sofa and partly on the woman's shoulder. The woman's head is snuggled against the cat, and vice versa.
THE DIALOGUE:
Girl's voice (offscreen): "Mom!"
Woman snuggling with cat: "Yeah?"
Girl's voice (offscreen): "I fell!"
Woman snuggling with cat: "There are bandages in the cabinet."
Girl's voice (offscreen): "I'm bleeding!"
Woman snuggling with cat: "Grab two."
The woman makes no attempt to move and help the girl; she stays put on the sofa with her cat. To me, the rest of the commercial is immaterial. The product, Sheba® cat food, is something I would never buy for my cat, if I had a cat. I am highly offended that the makers of this commercial must think it is cute that a woman prefers snuggling with her cat to getting up and checking on her bleeding daughter, or that cat-owning potential buyers of their product will think it is cute that a woman prefers snuggling with her cat to getting up and checking on her bleeding daughter and that they will rush out to buy the product. I for one would never give them one cent of my money.
Ever.
I feel even more negative about this product than I do toward Teresa Heinz Kerry's ketchup.
If you wish, you may now try to show me where I am wrong.
Do you make product choices based on facts (the quality of the ingredients or workmanship) or on emotion (you like the commercial)?
I dislike them all. A 40 minute programme I watched yesterday lasted an hour. As long as we have it here, thank goodness for the BBC.
ReplyDeleteRe. your previous post I must point out that here in Merrie Olde Englande we have no commercials on the BBC channels but we do have them on our commercial channels such as ITV1, ITV2, Channel 4, Channel 5 etcetera. When commercials come on that is the time to visit the lavatory, make a cup of tea or flick over to the BBC 24hour News channel for three or four minutes. The woman in the cat food commercial you described should face the full weight of the law. Neglecting her daughter like that is unforgivable. A public flogging would be too light a punishment for her.
ReplyDeleteTroll Alert.
DeleteYou must be either drinking too much or need some Tenas. I see you are following the Muzzie party line with your advocating flogging in public. Whatever rocks your boat, pop round sometime and we'll debate the matter.
You are entirely correct!
ReplyDeleteI don't think that I have seen that commercial, but I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteThe only commercials that have stuck with me through the years, have been those with jingles..."I'm a pepper, he's a pepper, she's a pepper...drink Dr. Pepper." Or how about "my bologna has a first name..."I wish I was an Oscar Mayer weiner..."Plop,plop, fizz, fizz." But just because I like the jingles, doesn't mean that I buy the product. :)
I don't have TV as in the old country we have to pay for the BBC whether we like it or not and I don't so don't. I do watch YouTube and if you are computer literate it's free and free of advertisements. I suspect you can get a box thingy to plug in and it gets rid of the adverts; if not someone is missing a trick.
ReplyDeleteWe have cats but they live outside and we only give them food in the middle of winter if they deign to come asking for it. I have dogs but I buy a sack of stuff that costs £12.40p for twenty kilos, it feeds them for six weeks in summer and about five in winter. We are lucky here as VAT on animal food is zilch if you purchase in quantities greater than 15kg. Come to think having left the EU we oughtn't to be paying VAT at all but that's another battle that is unwinnable. Too many public servant and immigrant parasites to keep for a parasitic government to consider reducing taxation.
It certainly doesn't sound like an advert designed to endear itself to non cat lovers. Ah. Yes. Cat lovers. They probably like it. Probably why I'm don't have pets (of any sort).
ReplyDeleteWe don't have television, so I don't see ads. I generally buy according to price or previous experience with products.
ReplyDeleteI know the ad you are referring to and I agree with you. It is inappropriate and unnecessary to have such an ad.
ReplyDeleteI do make product choices based on facts and experience. I generally don't trust any ads.