Clarity Safety Consulting

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The secret message of the Super Bowl Ads

The Super Bowl was on last week. This has become the other unofficial holiday in the US and to some extent Canada. People attend parties and celebrations. I saw one article that was pushing for the Monday after the Super Bowl to be a holiday so that people can recover. What has made football so popular, well the truth is, many of viewers couldn’t care less about the game or who wins. They tune in for two things the half-time show and the legendary commercials.

Advertisers shelled out on average 3.5 Million for a 30 second spot. If you multiply that out it is $420 million per hour.

Now we don’t get a lot of these ads on Canadian TV. But advertising sends a message. One person summed up the message of the ads.

If you paid attention to these, or any commercials, you might have noticed that they rarely advertise the benefits of the product they are hawking. Instead, advertisers tie their products to what we really want: friends, fun, beauty and ultimately, happiness.
It makes perfect sense. Can you imagine if Budweiser had to stick to simply advertising the “benefits” of its product, rather than show a bunch of beautiful people doing beautiful things? Picture it: a regular American comes home from work, gets a beer out of the fridge and sits down on the couch (the beer for making “Jersey Shore” slightly more watchable). The end.
That doesn’t exactly make me want to rush out to buy a 12-pack of Bud, but that’s just me.
Next, take the example of Coca-Cola. Sure, Coke tastes good, but when is the last time having one brought you closer to family and/or friends? Or made you feel like a fuzzy polar bear?
The point we should be taking from these commercials isn’t about the product they are trying to sell, but about the qualities they use to do it. Joking, laughing, playing, getting together with friends and family –– these are the things that make us happy –– and you don’t need to buy any particular product to have any of them.
But take it a step further, because these commercials are really telling us something more than just to buy their product –– they are telling us to make enough money to buy their product.
So the message we get in this country, from the time we are very little kids to the time we are all grown up, is that more money equals more stuff. And if I learned anything from watching commercials this Sunday, it’s that more stuff means more happiness. So, more money must mean more happiness.

Mass media marketing has influenced us. To be dissatisfied with our lives. To question our looks, our friends, our truck, how much fun we have. We question - Are we truly happy?

Gratitude is the opposite of this. It is to be happy and satisfied with what we have, to be committed to our important relationships and instead of wishing that we were connected with better people. It challenges us to make our relationships with people better.

Gratitude is recognizing God’s blessing in our lives. It is submitting to his blessings instead of our own sense of entitlement. Gratitude is freeing.

In Psalm 23 how does it start? The Lord is my shepherd…. In other words when you are close to God the stuff that we want becomes unimportant.

The 10 commandments are concluded with what final one.
“Do not covet” - If you follow 10 you won’t break the previous 5 for sure and probably all 9.

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