First and foremost, I want to wish everyone a wonderful Holiday™ Season. I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving weekend and got your fill of turkey and “quality time” with the family, whatever that is…
Now on to the Blog… I don’t want to sound like everyone else out there, nor do I want to sound in-your-face religious, but man, people sure have forgotten what Christmas is all about. The Holiday™ Season is now a corporate sponsored event, much like the Chrysler Golf Classic and other corporate-backed pro sports.
I’m not big on shopping on the infamous Black Friday after Thanksgiving, but this season things just got out of control. Advertisers broke out the big bucks to make sure that you spent your hard-earned money last weekend. And this got me thinking: this whole Holiday™ Season thing is really one big commercial, created and encouraged by all of us advertising professionals. I did some research, and did you know that:
1 – “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was created, written, and produced by an in-house copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department stores in the early 1900s? He was pressured by his bosses to come up with a jingle that would help bring in kids (and their parents’ money) to the store.
2 – “Frosty the Snowman” also had its origins as an advertising jingle. Apparently, some big-city store had a guy dressed up as a snowman stand out front and had a chorus of kids sing the tune, thus enticing people to go in and check out the savings.
3 – The greatest and most famous of all Holiday™ traditions is the Macy’s Parade, which is, obviously, sponsored by Macy’s. This has become the “official” opening of the Holiday™ Season
4 – With the use of its cute polar bears, Coca-Cola has practically become the official drink of the Holiday™ Season
These are just a few examples, but if this consumerist trend continues, we won’t be too far from seeing Santa’s suit covered with corporate logos. In a world in which Star Jones asked for corporate sponsors to finance her wedding, are we advertisers so desperate as to prostitute anything out there for a quick buck? Just thinking….
2 comments:
Funny you should question just to what lengths we would go to prostitute ourself, because if you look it up... Saint Nick is the good old patron saint of prostitutes... So now you know why he says Ho ho ho.
Well, since traditional media is being more and more fragmented, with Digital Video Recorders and Video On Demand, coming into play, and with advertisers desperately trying to figure out how to reach these technologically savvy consumers, we MIGHT just have to consider emblazoning a big ol' logo across Santa's sleigh, or start paying him for endorsements! ha-ha. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving as well. Thanks for the interesting article.
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