Hey, guess what? Mr. & Mrs. Stupid have a child!
First, the commercial.
Golly, you’ve never heard that commercial before, have you?
A compelling story, with real-life characters we truly care about. How could it be any better?
Why do Mr. & Mrs. Stupid always have a Precocious Child?
How does the Precocious Child know everything about HD Radio?
In what universe does a parent’s voice sound that way when directed at a child? (Hint: They’re probably not speaking from the same height, nor with equal degrees of interest and/or urgency.)
In what world do parents and children converse without either one ever interrupting the other? In the Stupid family, each person waits for the other to complete not only a sentence but the entire thought before speaking.
You Never, Ever Will Hear A Child Say: “Dad, how come we don’t have an HD radio?”
You Might — Not Really, But Theoretically It’s Possible — Hear A Child Say: “Dad, can we get an HD radio?”
Any parents reading this who can back me up on that? Anyone? Anyone?
Why is Mr. Stupid the only person in the world who thinks HD radio users are required to pay a monthly bill?
Why does his Precocious Child know otherwise?
Why does this Precocious Child know that “cable TV” and “high speed Internet” cost money, when all his peers just take those communication channels for granted? (If you have a child under the age of 10, you know what I mean.)
Why does Mr. Stupid ask his Precocious Child if HD radios are expensive?
How does the Precocious Child know HD radios cost as little as $50?
How many children offer their parents investment advice?
How many parents ask their children for stock tips?
How many listeners can relate to this father/child conversation?
Where’s the anti-nausea medication?
Comments on this entry are closed.
I have three kids…and even my exceptionally precocious 15 yr old never, ever talks like that. In short, you hit the nail on the head with your comments, Dan. They ask about stuff, they sometimes ding-dong to get it till you want to throw ’em out of the house, but there is no way they will ever be mini-adults about it. In that vein, if the author had written a kid belaboring said parent about getting an HD till the parent was about to tear out his or her hair…the kind where said kid uses his or her peers’ experiences…. “But Daaaaad, Melissa’s Dad got one and she said it only cost fifty bucks. Fifty, Dad. ‘N she gets to listen to all the neat channels and I just have my ‘pod!” That’s a real kid in real life. While the listener might want to turn the dial, they won’t. They’ll have a sneaking sympathy for the adult.
The HD Alliance has never really explained what HD Radio is – another blunder is a long-line of failed attempts to get the general public interested in HD Radio. After six years of virtually flat sales, time to give up the ship.
Does it stink on ice? Yup. Does it stink almost as bad as the current crop of Geico radio ads? Almost.
Whatever you do, please please please don’t tell my sales staff that there is a “stupid” spawn!!!
The ENTIRE group of ads produced as part of the “HD Radio Alliance” has been absolutely ZERO help to us. They completely failed to inform AM & FM listeners what the benefits of HD are, and if anything, set the whole process back with confusing themes like ” the stations between the stations.”
I’m a huge fan of HD, but have been disappointed in how it’s been implemented…
This ad like almost all other HD ads is quite stupid, but….. not as stupid as HD radio itself. I’m just wondering how long it will take before the Alliance realizes that they are bankrolling a technology that is NEVER going to succeed. Why won’t it succeed? … because it does not work. I have one of the better HD tuners right next to me, in fact many radio stations use this same tuner as an analog station monitor.
I cannot receive a 50KW AM station in HD 40 miles away from me. I can only receive a 100KW FM station in HD also 40 miles from in HD some of the time. I can receive both of these station in analog all the time. HD does not sound much better if at all than analog, in fact one station sounds worse in HD than it does in analog when it comes in. The one aforementioned AM station which is the only HD AM station I can receive despite 4 or 5 others close enough by to come in well in analog sounds terrible in HD. Not only is HD nonexistent most of the time, it’s 3 station wide hissy sidebands propagate for hundreds of miles covering up the other stations around the main channel.
HD radio is a scam which consumers have roundly rejected. I was stupid enough to buy one however but it has not been turned on in close to a year. Hmmmm… I wonder why.
Respectfully Dan,
What do children have to do with selling HD Radio? What does an infant in a high chair have to do with trading stock? What do several horses in a wintry field have to do with selling beer? What does music legend Stevie Wonder have to do with selling Volkswagens?
You know a big part of getting an ad to sell, is getting the general public’s attention, whether it be kids, priests, Shaq, sex or the immortal Clara Peller (I still can hear her voice, thirty years later).
(some) People out there love children and they love them in the media, outspoken and out of place. They think it’s more cute than a Popin’ Fresh poke. These people are akin to the people that dress up their dogs to make them look like hot dogs, ballerinas and sweater ladened Scots.
The atrocity is not the use of a precocious kid, which is marginally entertaining in the best of ads (Life Cereal), but the writing in this spot was contrived and the ‘kid’ was an adult digitally enhanced to sound smaller. I would rather hear cats in heat than waving this tripe over my airways.
Agreed, we are bombarded with commercials that don’t make sense (Old Spice’s gentleman riding a horse backwards) and children are just another tool to get people’s attention. At least what they could have done was had a real kid do the V/O and rewrite so it’s not a forced, one sided conversation. Use of humor where there is an ad on the radio in the commercial that mentions HD radio in the background, between father and son pause adds a deeper sense of dimension to the ad.
In advertising, we’ll do and say anything to get the listener to listen. This commercial has limited appeal and misses the mark on writing and content, more than the use of an implied child.
The worst part about this, it was probably not a local commercial but a network ad. Oy!
Regards, M.
I truly hope that the RAB and what ever other media organization responsible paid BIG BUCKS for this campaign! And I truly hope those who authorized those BIG BUCKS are held accountable – preferably with their jobs. When radio is suffering enough in cutbacks and other problems to even think this is smart advertising is nothing short of outright theft.