Thursday, December 19, 2013

AT&T Bigger Is Better Pool Ad

In this next ad from the ongoing campaign of some guy in a suit interviewing a group of kids at a small table in I’m guessing kindergarten, the guy in a suit asks: “What’s better, bigger or smaller?” Then the kids all cry: “Bigger!” as though they were reading off a cue card, or maybe even paid to say it. (But they wouldn’t do that, would they?) And then the moderator suit guy (a.k.a.: corporate bigwig/”The Man”) postulates a situation wherein someone invites these tots to a pool party, and the pool is big, and wouldn’t that be better than a small pool. And the kids like the idea of the bigger pool.

But then they realize the folly of their ways when they all drown in the bigger pool. Wow, if only they’d preferred the smaller pool, where it’s safe for children to swim! But corporate America wants your children to drown: Mwa ha ha!

Okay, I’m kidding, of course, because if your kids drown, they can’t pay bills for a lifetime to a faceless corporate entity that’s trying to hook them into a lifetime of brand identity servitude by making ads like this. (Of course, that’s a joke too: these ads are for adults, I think, and they use kids because kids are cute. But someone will accuse them of doing it for that reason somewhere, I’ll bet…)

But you know, maybe a more timely answer would have been: “The bigger pool is better, because then we’ll all drown, and we won’t then becomes victims of a school system that no longer educates children, only to be dumped into a for-profit college system that does not prepare us for a career, and then to be simply dumped into a stagnant job market where we will only be crushed under our student loan debt while finding no work. And if we don’t drown, then the robot dinosaur will definitely kill us, saving us from such a fate. That is why the bigger pool is more desirable.” Wow, what a shame that kids have to learn the harsh realities of a failing system so young, but I guess it’s good that they know what they’re facing early enough that it’s not a surprise later, huh?

Here’s the big wet spot: