Well, it’s getting close to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day again, and you know what that means (as far as advertising is concerned, anyway): there will be all kinds of car sales and stuff, just like they do for President’s Day! I remember a few years ago, I saw a full page print ad for a MLK Day mattress sale, and it made me think of how they could say: “You can have a dream too, with a new mattress from Sealy, Simmons or Serta tonight!”
And that made me think of all the snoring cure products advertised on cable TV all the time, and how they could have a commercial for one of those products, showing MLK and his wife in bed, and he’s asleep snoring, and she turns to the camera and says: “I have a dream too, but his snoring keeps waking me up!” And then they could go into the spiel about the snoring cure product and how it works, and say it will let you all “have a dream too”.
Now, these ad ideas are intended as a joke. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech is really a high point in human history, and I think it would be a little bit cynical to actually run ads like this. But after seeing how ridiculous advertising is for President’s Day sales, and how silly they make our most respected and revered presidents look, I think it’s fair to say that in a few decades from now, MLK Day will probably see commercials like my joke spots here running on TV all over the place. And I guess it’s not really any worse than commercials with Abraham Lincoln at a Super Bowl party saying stuff like: “Four scores and seven beers ago…” (Okay, I don’t think anyone has done that one yet, but I’ve seen worse.)
