Hey everybody, let’s talk about this breathtakingly shitty commercial, called “Breathe,” from Nestlé’s Stouffer’s, promoting their
high-saturated fat, low-taste macaroni and cheese frozen dinners:
The spot, a part of a campaign by J. Walter Thompson New York that seeks
to boost weakening frozen food sales, begins with a teenage girl eagerly
talking about her day with her parents, both of whom appear to be annoyed that
their daughter is talking to them.
“They ran into Jeff and Ash—like, literally ran into him,”
the girl recounts, as the father shoots a why-the-hell-is-she-talking-to-us
look to the mother, who in turn flashes an insincere smile while not even
disguising her lack of interest in her child. The daughter continues—“So
awkward! He spilled a little soda on his shirt!”—as a voiceover plays over her:
This story had 30 minutes left, until Kim realized that Stouffer’s mac and cheese is made with real cheddar, aged to perfection for six long months. When you start with the best cheddar, you get the best mac and cheese.
The daughter is so enraptured by the hundreds and hundreds
of milligrams of sodium in her serving of hastily-microwaved food-like
substance that she stops chattering about stupid teenage girl nonsense like her thoughts and feelings and the people in life about whom she cares.
The father, ever the smartass, asks her, “So what about Jessica?”—to which the
daughter replies, “What about her?” And just like that, Operation Get My
Daughter to Stop Sharing Things with Me is a resounding success.
This ad, ostensibly targeting parents who value dinnertime
as a family event, is such a complete misfire that so thoroughly misunderstands
its audience that I’m genuinely curious if JWT took some side cash from Kraft
to bungle it. The reality is, parents who at least make an effort to make
at-the-table, TV-free family dinners a thing want to listen to their kids talk about what’s on their minds. It
is, in fact, the whole damn point of
a family dinner. The problem isn’t that their teenagers are sharing too much;
it’s that teenagers are sharing too little or nothing at all.
Here, the daughter is happily going into detail about her
life—and true, it does sound like inconsequential, high school cafeteria
minutiae. But it’s clearly important to her,
and when someone—especially your own child—trusts
you enough to share, the least you can do is be kind enough to listen without making
faces. Besides, if your kid learns that you can’t be trusted to care about
small stuff, why would she trust you with the big stuff?
In short, JWT at some point pitched a commercial that
essentially said, “Stouffer’s: For terrible parents1 who want their
kids to shut the fuck up,” and Stouffer’s inexplicably said, “OH MY GOD, CAN WE
SIGN UP TWICE?” Well done, all.
* * *
Okay, I know I bang the gender critique gong
more often than I intend on this blog, but watch another commercial in the campaign, called “Cell Phone”:
A teenage girl is looking at her cell phone. When she takes
a bit of her lasagna, the purported deliciousness of her unit of food causes
her to put her phone down. A voiceover explains: “As Katie puts her cell phone
down for the first time all week, she realizes that Stouffer’s lasagna is
topped with fresh cheese that browns beautifully. Fresh cheese and a touch of
aged parmesan is [sic] what gives us
our irresistible flavor. When you start with the best blend of cheese, you get
the best lasagna.” Her cell phone buzzes; her parents look at their daughter
expectantly; the daughter ignores the phone and says, “What?”
First of all, there’s some seriously mixed messaging here: in
the first commercial, the parents are trying to stop their daughter from
talking to them; in the second commercial, the parents are trying to stop their
daughter from talking (or texting, I guess) to her friends. Which is it? Or do
parents who serve Stouffer’s just want their kids to stop talking to everyone?
Geez, get your pitch straight, guys.
But more importantly, why are they picking on teenage girls
here? Look, I’m not saying that Stouffer’s is a part of some conspiracy to make
the world into a phallocratic dongtopia or anything2, but two
commercials in the same campaign that are predicated on stopping teenage girls
from talking? Two commercials in the same campaign that presuppose teenage
girls just talk about silly, unimportant stuff? Pretty lame, especially if we’re
trying to get girls to Lean In or Step Up or Speak Out or what have you.
(It’s worth noting that ConAgra’s Manwich has a similar,
and far superior, ad campaign by DDB West
based on a lot of the same ideas, including a spot in which Manwich stops a teenage girl’s
texting. The key difference is that, in Manwich’s ads, the parents actually
seem to care about and enjoy the company of their kids—sons and daughters. And of course, they’re
narrated by Ron Fucking
Swanson.)
* * *
And as long as I’m taking swipes at Stouffer’s, take a look
at the Nutrition Facts for Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, as
presented on its website:
“Serving Size: 2. Servings Per Container: Not Given.” This is the opposite of helpful.
Just as confusing, despite each serving (which we know is
exactly two somethings) containing 6
grams of saturated fat, the label still goes on to say that the product is “[n]ot
a significant source of Saturated Fat.” Is this why Stouffer’s feels no shame
about how unhealthful its foodesque offerings are—in their world, 6 grams of
saturated fat apparently rounds down to insignificant? Huh.
Yes, yes, I know—this is probably the result of some sloppy
coding. But still, get it together, Stouffer’s.
1I intentionally avoided making the comment that,
if you’re feeding your kid frozen garbage, you’re probably a terrible parent
anyway, so this ad knows its intended audience all too well—which, to be fair,
would be an amazing defense of JWT’s incompetence here. But that’s not cool;
plenty of parents would love to cook healthful meals for their kids, but they
work two jobs and live in a food desert and are barely making ends meet and
thus, Stouffer’s from Walgreens could really be the best of a limited set of
bad options. Plenty of horrible parents make home-cooked meals for their kids;
plenty of genuinely wonderful parents hate the fact that they’re feeding their
kids frozen meatloaf and are working really hard for long hours to make sure
they won’t have to in the future.
2There’s no need for a conspiracy; it already is,
amirite ladies?
No? Fine, whatever, I have mac
and cheese and lube and pictures
of a sexy Raccoon Mario girl, I don’t need you.
