January 17, 2018

McDonald’s ‘Playdate’ commercial plays with old dad stereotype

Can this really be what McDonald’s thinks of today’s modern father?

In one of its latest ads, an “in over (his) head” dad apparently can’t handle a sleepover, nor manage to feed the girls while his wife is out of town — so he visits a McDonald’s.

Judging by reaction from dads on social media, the ad sends not only a message of insensitivity to fathers who supposedly can’t handle children nor prepare food, but it also inadvertently tells moms they’re the primary cooks in the home.

It’s another controversial approach for the fast food giant fresh off the heels of a similar contentious ad also involving fatherhood. Last May, it pulled a United Kingdom commercial after backlash from viewers who insisted it was insensitive to grief-stricken kids. In the ad, a grieving son hears how he and his late father shared a love of Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. McDonald’s promptly removed the ad after 150 people complained.

An email inquiry to the McDonald’s Media Relations Office went unreturned.

In today’s modern world where advertisers are increasingly evolving past “choosy moms” and “mother-approved” slogans, McDonald’s latest message trends backward.

Can’t dad handle a fun sleepover involving five adorably cute girls? Can’t dad manage to feed these girls without his wife being present? Is it necessary that dad needs to call his wife? What message does this ad send to all parents — that moms can be working women as long as they still maintain control at home?

Put another way, would McDonald’s ever run a similar ad with the roles reversed? Imagine the scenario: a woman realizes she’s in way over her head when her daughter has four friends over for a sleepover and her husband is out of town, which means she has to feed and entertain a group of hyper little girls.

It’s highly unlikely that McDonald’s would go this route.

And that’s the moment you realize an old, timeworn, unfair stereotype has been employed — and you’ve insulted fathers (also your customers) everywhere.

It’s time for change, McDonald’s. Dads deserve better.

December 18, 2017

Waiting for Fisher-Price to acknowledge dads

For many Christians, the four-week Advent season is time of expectant waiting and preparation for Christmas. The strong emphasis on waiting is similar to how Jesus’ parents – Mary and Joseph – waited for their child to be born, which is, of course, fully comparable to any parent today waiting on the birth of a child.

Waiting isn’t always fun, but that’s exactly what dads have been doing for several Christmases now, and it has nothing to do with pregnancy. They’re waiting for Fisher-Price to acknowledge them as equal parents and users of their products.

It’s at the Fisher-Price website where it showcases a video (scroll about halfway down) undermining dad as not only a parent, but also as a customer – a cardinal sin of any business.

The video warmly thanks moms for choosing Fisher-Price as the most loved and trusted brand — a wonderful gesture — yet Fisher-Price happens to forget someone. Awkwardly enough, the video highlights two fathers during its one minute montage.

All of it is like being at a party where the host only greets and speaks with the wife, not the husband.

But equally surprising is that this video was based on a 2015 survey, which begs two immediate questions:

Why survey only moms? In today’s dual-income, online shopping world, dads have a major impact on the state of today’s retail industry. Modern families have progressed to the point that it’s not just mom spending the family’s income – it’s dad, too. In addition, statistics prove that holiday shopping is consistently shared by both parents who want to have equal input on gift buying.
Why has this video remained active for two years? That’s a long time for Fisher-Price to thank only one-half of its customers and ignore the rest, especially when we’ve tweeted them several times over the years, with no response.

Unfortunately, the video isn’t the only exclusion Fisher-Price exhibits. Its online commerce store remains consistent in ignoring fathers as important nurturers and members of the family (photo right).

Fisher-Price was founded by three individuals, two of whom were men, and together devised a mission to “keep enriching the lives of young families.”

If they’d like to honor their past and fulfill that mission, perhaps Fisher-Price could make a quick revision and respect the many breadwinners whose income went toward the purchase of a Fisher-Price product.

Dads have waited long enough. It’s time for change.

December 14, 2017

Milking an old stereotype for all it’s not worth

Whenever dads are used in commercials, they’re often portrayed as comic fodder: goofy, bumbling, inept, clumsy. The dad joke isn’t just something humorous your father once said – he is the joke. We’re not laughing with him – we’re laughing at him.

The California Milk Advisory Board recently featured dad in a TV spot, and while he’s not the butt of jokes, its marketing decides to take a different approach. Here they attempt to offer dad props, but it turns out to be nothing more than backhanded praise with an open belief that mom is the real, primary parent.

You’ll be surprised at how many insults can be leveled toward dad in this 30-second ad. realcaliforniamilk

“Welcome to Saturday,” the ad’s voiceover slowly declares. “Sure, mom does all the heavy lifting during the week, but on this day dad makes flapjacks dripping with hot, melting California butter. And somehow dad’s the MVP: Most Valuable Parent. It’s just not fair.”

A gaggle of kids then scoot by with assurance: “Love you mom.”

Let’s look at the script piece-by-piece.

“…mom does all the heavy lifting during the week…” – Really? All the heavy lifting? In today’s modern dual-income families, don’t dads contribute a little more than the old-fashioned stereotypes of the ‘50s? Besides, why discount dad’s role as a breadwinner that provides for the family? Whether you’re stay-at-home or employed outside the home, both roles are equally important no matter the gender.

“…somehow dad’s the MVP…” – Did the ad just say “somehow,” as if to imply it was a fluke that he could be equally, competent and valuable to a family as a mom? Let’s stop keeping score as if parenting and/or housework is an equal 50-50 split. That’s a fallacy, and completely unfair to the spouse who works outside the home to provide. This kind of talk only creates a parenting divide.

“It’s just not fair” – This line might be the kicker of them all. Is it not fair that dad could possibly be an equal parent? It’s as if the California Milk Advisory Board is afraid they might have offended moms, so they have to offer assurance by way of the kids declaring, “Don’t worry, we still love you mom.”

Two other factors are at play in this ad. One is that you never actually see dad’s face. Granted, the food is the real star, but the child’s smile was shown. Couldn’t there have been better acknowledgment of dad, perhaps by showing the same warm grin on his face?

What’s more, the ad closes by declaring that its milk is delivered “from our family farms to your table.” Family includes everyone – even dad – and isn’t it ironic that the very people who deliver this product have been discounted by the product it represents?

If some company told women they don’t know about sports, home repair or cars, they’d be considered sexist. There’d be public uproar. And all of it would be justified.

But when another says that dad doesn’t do as much as mom, he’s not as valuable to a family as mom and he’s simply not an equal parent – we’re good?

December 7, 2017

Spilling drinks on dads

As a national voice for the non-alcoholic beverage industry, the American Beverage Association (ABA) sure doesn’t seem to represent the national voice.

Founded in 1919, this trade organization includes producers and bottlers of soft drinks, bottled water and other non-alcoholic beverages. Unless you’re a sports history fan, you may not recognize the ABA acronym, but you know some of the drinks it represents: Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper.

These major brands appear in a commercial together – that’s right, together – to help tout how the ABA is offering more drinks with less sugar and smaller portions.

Only a message as important as this could help competing brands join forces for a greater cause. That greater cause, of course, is selling more drinks. However, that’s still a tough sell for soda makers who regularly come under fire for contributing to America’s obesity and overall health problems — items of concern to parents everywhere.

So who does the ABA enlist as a voice of reason in its ad?

Not both parents, who in today’s modern world share influence over their kids’ nutrition. Instead, they tout only mom as the one who watches everyone’s diet. That national voice should include dads if that’s indeed what the ABA represents.

Instead, the 30-second ad remains stuck in time and saddled by old-fashioned stereotypes that undermine fathers as equal, competent parents while the narrator explains:

“Everyone’s gotta listen to mom when it comes to reducing the sugar in your family’s diet…because we know mom wants what’s best.”

The ABA’s work is important, and their message is vital to winning back customers for its members. But ignoring the contribution of dads to families is an unfortunate oversight for these major drink manufacturers and its lobbying group. Again, dads are very much part of the national voice.

There’s simply no reason to suggest that dads aren’t involved in raising children and taking care of families. Besides, it offers an incredible disservice to mom by heaping all of this responsibility on her shoulders while indirectly implying that a mom’s place is in the kitchen.

Its leadership owes parents a swift apology. Modern families want new choices when it comes to drinks, accompanied by equally progressive ads they represent. They also want to be treated like valued customers. To be sure, the topic affects both parents, not just moms.

A change in approach for these beverages will signal a refreshing, new era that appeals to everyone — and everyone certainly includes fathers.

December 1, 2017

Parental equality made easy

Dads are often told they’re inadequate in varied ways. They didn’t do the diaper correctly. They didn’t fold the laundry properly. The dishwasher wasn’t loaded right. And of course, the ever-popular dads don’t know how to cook.

Deep down, we all know this is absurd. When dads are “corrected” for doing things wrong, that’s unfair because they didn’t do it wrong; they may have done it different, but different isn’t necessarily wrong.

So now we have Unilever, the world’s largest consumer goods company and operator of Country Crock, telling us not only that dads can’t bake, but can’t even handle easy baking.

It’s true that home cooking is more often associated with women than men, but that doesn’t mean companies should exclude dads. If anything, there’s a missed opportunity to covet an untapped market. Companies would be wise to target fathers just the same.

Via stereotypes and old fashioned attitudes, home repair is more connected with men than women, but Lowe’s regularly employs women in its marketing. There’s not a single female player in the NFL, but the league still spends millions trying to reach women and moms. Harley-Davidson has benefited greatly by pursuing female customers.

Couldn’t the rest of the marketing world learn from these success stories and apply them to fathers?

Ironically, in the culinary world, professional, high-status cooking is a male-dominated sport. According to Ann Cooper, author of “A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen: The Evolution of Women Chefs,” 55 percent of people working in the culinary industry are men.

The dads can’t cook myth also does an equal disservice to women by inferring that a mother’s place is in the kitchen. The reality is that it’s really not that hard to follow a recipe. Yet countless food manufacturers refuse to include dad on their websites, in promotions, or on commercials. Even micro meals — arguably the easiest food prep of all — don’t speak to fathers.

We implore Unilever and Country Crock to take a strong look at how dads are treated and used in their marketing. Now is the time for its creative agency to view dads with a clean slate by erasing all the myths and misguided labels, which drag fathers down from being viewed as equal and adept parents.

Companies who’d like to increase revenue and brand loyalty need to implement a different marketing strategy if they want to reach dads.

Women will never be treated with equality in the workforce until we start to treat dads the same at home. The two are intertwined. Exhibiting a gender bias in both is wrong, but the good news is that it’s fairly quick and easy to start making website edits. The rest of the company culture will follow and positively affect its other family of products.

You can make that happen today, Unilever. Families are watching.

October 26, 2017

Why does Claritin insist dads don’t take care of kids?

Who says dads don’t take care of kids’ allergies? Bayer Global, makers of Children’s Claritin – that’s who.

It doesn’t take long to figure out who Bayer wants as its customer base when you visit its gender-specific website which insists dads aren’t parents who buy or provide medicine. Bayer doesn’t just offer a Smart Allergy Mom Toolkit – they’re so convinced that only moms matter they trademarked it.

But that’s not all. Bayer even offers the Claritin Mom Crew, which offers only moms free product samples and promotional items in exchange for positive reviews. Dads, it would seem, were not even given an opportunity to speak because the invite was never extended.

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It’s all a tough pill to swallow for dads who remain dedicated as part of today’s modern families. It’s these same dads who hear constant viral stories of mothers who complain about having to do it all, then get little by way of backup from ad agencies who insist just that – moms must do it all.

Of course, we all know this not to be true. Dads also seek assistance when looking to administer medicine to allergy-suffering children. Dads are every bit equal, competent parents who care greatly about their children.

These are not your dads of yesteryear, depicted in 1950s sitcoms as aloof, unemotional and neglectful. Nor are they the spoofed, incompetent 1980s fathers of “Mr. Mom” and “Vacation” who needed corrected by their more sensible wives.

Bayer’s approach is both disappointing and troubling. It’s effectively telling fathers everywhere – you don’t matter. It’s a surprising and unfair omission from a company whose mission is “to achieve and maintain leadership positions in our markets” and to “respect the interests of all our stakeholders.”

It’s hard to imagine how all of these ideals can be accomplished when it’s not aiming to reach the dad market, nor respecting the members of that market.

Bayer’s #BeAnOutsider social media campaign is a clever one that encourages Claritin users to start enjoying the outdoors again. But it also offers a heavy dose of irony to dads: they already are outsiders.

Perhaps someday Bayer will let dads in and make them to feel like the true, equal parents they are without any bias toward who they think cares for kids today.

If Bayer truly knew its customer base, it would know differently.

October 18, 2017

Let’s stop telling dads they’re not parents

A clear shortcoming of excluding dads from marketing is how it diminishes his ability as a capable consumer. dadshops6

Of course, moms possess no more instinctual ability to purchase items than dads, who are fully fit shoppers. The current message and stigma about dads, however, has trained us to think otherwise. It’s that same messaging that influences moms while they shop on their own. It’s curious to contemplate that while some people believe everything outside the home is a man’s world, the marketing community firmly believes otherwise when constructing messages in relation to everything inside the home.

With all of the emotion, empowerment, and authenticity of advertising directed toward mothers, how constructive are advertisements which speak only to them?

In other words, is society really taking mothers seriously when all the focus is placed on them to the exclusion of fathers? Do mothers really want this heap of responsibility when scores of moms incessantly plead for help in the home and caring for children? Do mothers really want it all, as ads so often suggest: motherhood, career, and control of the household and family? Is it fair to portray women solely as happy homemakers in half of the ads and as sex objects in the other half?

Viewed collectively, these ads seem to be at odds with how women are regarded in society and inadvertently places unwanted labels on them.

The subjective conception of such marketing means that women pay a price beyond labels and undesirable pressure.

Humanity will never achieve overall equality for women, particularly at work, until the same equality for men is achieved as parents. The two are intertwined.

When gender stereotypes unfairly discount men as true parents and view women as instinctual caretakers of children, it conveys a message that it’s a man’s world everywhere but home.

October 5, 2017

Beware of the unconscious bias

To see food products like Jif and Kix hold on to their timeworn, stereotypical catchphrases — all of it has reached a state of comicality. It certainly suggests absurdity and irrationality. We’re talking about peanut butter and cereal. Those products are specific to moms?

But then there are those items related to babies, and less people seem to notice the exclusionary practices tied to its marketing. Boppies were never invented solely for mothers, but they’re regularly positioned to exclude dads from messaging and thus, demote dads to secondary parental status. Similac offers baby formula – a surefire product for dads if there ever was one – yet its makers go out of their way to reject dads in messaging.

All of this is detrimental to families, of course, because it impedes the family from flourishing as it should without recognizing fathers as equal, competent parents.
Dr. Brown’s can now be grouped with the Boppy and Similac. They’re all products that owe us a little more, that need to try a little harder, that have a responsibility to go out of their way to ensure that dads don’t feel left out. They’re products that should regularly feature dads and speak to them in all that they do.

Go ahead and try to find a single image of a dad on the Dr. Brown’s site. Is there even one? That’s hardly representative of today’s modern families, or even families of yesteryear.

The current actions of companies like Dr. Brown’s, Boppy and Similac would be a little like Lowe’s only using men in its ads and scripting slogans and ad copy that only speaks to that one gender. And imagine the uproar if they did! Rather, they know that home improvement is hardly a gender-specific thing, even though common stereotypes indicate that power tools and outdoor work is supposedly for men.

But instead, Dr. Brown’s takes the old-fashioned route and tells us that dads don’t take care of babies, or can’t bottle feed, or don’t want to. It’s all very troubling for a company that prides itself on innovation and support. And check out the disconcerting use of moms as a synonym for parent. Sorry Dr. Brown’s, but not all parents are moms, and thus, those terms can’t be succinctly substituted without leaving someone out.

Also take note of its Ambassadors program. Not only does it exclude fathers, it behaves as if they don’t exist.

Dr. Brown’s Twitter bio promises that its focus is “to create innovative feeding products to promote good health and optimal nutrition for baby.” If that’s true, then it’s time to make several revisions to its website and social media.

Dads want to deliver those things, too, and if someone tells him he can’t, he’s going to look elsewhere for someone who believes in him.

September 29, 2017

Baking up parental equality

Most consumer products have peak sales times of the year – periods on the calendar when companies can best capitalize on generating the most revenue.

For many, that time of year is the holiday shopping season, when gift buying is strong. For others, such as home improvement stores, that time occurs during the spring when home owners are fixing and planting. Fitness centers especially profit during January and February as New Year’s resolutions mean losing weight and exercising more.

Of course, this time of year – back-to-school season – is when breakfast and lunch makers ramp up efforts to get families in the groove of using their products.

And what is snack maker/baker Entenmann’s doing? It’s telling the nation that only one parent takes care of kids.

Not only can you find use of the word mom (not parent), you can also find images of a lopsided 13 moms vs. 4 dads on its Parents/Have Fun With Us page.

All of this would have been appropriate some 60-70 years ago when moms ran the show. But parenting has changed dramatically since then. In today’s modern families, dad is now also in charge of buying groceries, clothes, school supplies, and other products and services the family needs to exist. So the marketing approach is key, because dad needs to see he is a trustworthy purchasing agent for his family. The best way to do this is to involve him in the marketing process and value him as an equal parent as well as a valued customer.

By marketing directly to moms, Entenmann’s reinforces a certain stereotype and subliminally makes dad feel that mom is a better/leading parent.

Entenmann’s could do everyone a service by ending this practice of only conversing with moms. It will also do itself a firm favor by winning back dads who are currently reaching for another brand.

September 21, 2017

Not all parents are moms

While it’s disappointing to find another lunch product maker ignoring dads as equally competent parents and shoppers, the latest exclusionary campaign – this time from Land O’Frost – hits dads below the belt in a variety of ways. But you’ll have to look carefully for its greatest offense, which is buried beneath several gender-biased marketing methods.

No, it’s not the spinoff webpage section which uses its company name for a play-on-words covering everything related to parenthood, er, um, motherhood: landomoms.com.

It’s not the numerous web graphics which speak only to moms with language like, “Ah, mom life,” or definitions of “mom-ism.” Imagine the strange vibe a dad might get who visits landofrost.com or landomoms.com, and is repeatedly having to read that he’s a “mom,” which at the very minimum makes it clear with whom the company wishes to communicate.

It’s not social media posts, which sometimes awkwardly encourage both “moms and dads” to check out its tips and recipes at its one-gender-only named site.

It’s not even the problematic trademarked pledge above its logo that insists, “From our family to yours since 1958.” Keep in mind, this is a family company headed by three consecutive dads, who one can only assume wish for dads to be treated as important as anyone else.

What’s really disappointing is how the one-and-only dad imagery found on the front page of landomoms.com reveals a dad shouting and pointing at a tiny child who’s cowering on the ground, in the corner (right). Don’t dads deserve a little better than this? Does Land O’Frost really want to use its only photo of a dad in a terribly negative light? It’s not that the story’s topic itself isn’t valid – it’s a helpful topic of interest for parents – it’s just that there should be a greater quantity and quality of dad images. It would be nice to see an equal mix of genders celebrating the good in parenting, rather than furthering negative, stereotypical imagery of dads who aren’t happy, engaged, nurturing and caring parents.

That really was never true long ago, and it certainly isn’t now.

Land O’Frost seems like a fine company with quality products and strong community involvement. We say celebrate all that is good and show the nation what its story represents: how it was founded and carried on by three wonderful fathers who remained devoted to their families for generations.

What do you say, Land O’Frost? It’s not just dads and moms who are watching – it’s the kids. A renewed approach to marketing will remind future generations that family matters, and that the motto above your logo isn’t merely words.

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