For as long as I've been alive, everyone around me has scrambled to mute the television as soon as an ad comes on. In fact, it isn't even just on television. Ads on Spotify, Youtube, advertising in general is considered a nuisance of the highest degree. So why do I have such a particularly fond feeling for it? I suppose a part of it could be nostalgia, certainly, because a lot of the ads that I recall happily are ads from when I was younger and that takes me back to a...well, I won't say a better time, but, you know what I mean.
Either way, advertising to me has always been a source of comfort in one way or another. Hell, sometimes, late at night, I'll even channel surf until I discover a paid programming block and just let my television relay that back at me for the next few hours uninterrupted. There's just something safe inside of the advertising world. Something familiar in a world so teeming with blatant lies and corporatism. I just don't know what that something is, exactly. So I decided to dig through my life and figure out why I had such a soft spot for something whose sole utilization was to sell me crap I generally don't need.
And that led me to rediscovering the Campbell's Snowman ad.
I think a solid first reason for why I love advertising is because, a good majority of the time, it features families who love one another. You can't show familial drama, you can't show something that would need drawn out context, all you're given is a snapshot of life and love in the span of 30 seconds or so, and as a results, most of these families rival those on Nick At Nite, where everything was solved with a laugh and a wink wink to the camera. There's just a feeling of togetherness and warmth that not everyone got in their childhood, so I think that really helps me relate to it. I wish I could've been part of the ad families I saw. Even if it meant hawking wares with my ad mom, that would've still been a better life than whatever horrible thing I was trying to escape that week was. A lot of commercials too, especially older ones, have a sense of coziness to them. Take the classic Campbell's Chicken Soup Snowman commercial that, I guarantee if you're as old as I am, you will vaguely remember.
I mean, that's just positively goddamned wholesome, isn't it? I mean, sure, let's just ignore the fact that she straight up melted her snow son and now this strange human child has decided to take up residence in her home, but aside from that it's still sweet, right? A child coming in from the cold and his mom has a hot and ready bowl of soup for him, and not just any kind of soup, no, the soup of love; Campbells. At least that's what the brand has always taught us. It's the soup that keeps families together and, apparently, kills evil snow children masquerading as human children.
And christmas commercials always seemed to be the most warmth filled ones, didn't they, because the holiday itself is meant to evoke feelings of love and togetherness, at least from what Television has taught us. It lulls the viewer into a state of false security, thinking, "Well, this is sweet, I can relate to this" or "Well, this is sweet, I wish I could relate to this but my parents were total assbags so at least I can live vicariously through these ad families for 30 seconds a pop". Then once you're comfortable and not questioning anything, they hit you with the right hook. The product. It's a guaranteed marketing tactic and it works every single time.
And I don't mind this. If you just take it at face value for what it is, an ad to sell you soup, I can stand being lied to for 30 seconds as long as I get some sense of joy out of it as well. I can ignore the fact that they want me to buy soup. But I can't ignore the fact that their idea of love and family makes me wish I had that in my own life. A sense of sadness washes over me along with the sense of warmth, but unlike the snowman, I don't melt into a puddle on my mothers kitchen floor.
Quite the opposite, in fact, I freeze up instead. I stop believing that a real family full of real love and happiness can be achieved, and that this, an ad for fucking soup from 25 something fucking years ago, is the best I'll ever get.
Boy, who knew soup could make a person so philosophical?
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