by Katie Rodriguez
While watching 30 Rock last week on NBC’s website, Proctor & Gamble’s new Olympic campaign commercial popped up. Part of a series of commercials and an entire campaign, this particular 30 second clip focused on how moms always see their children as children, even as they compete as adults for worldwide recognition as Olympic athletes.
I thought the commercial was cute at first glance- who really wants their kids to grow up anyway? But near the end of the commercial, I realized more clearly what the campaign was focusing on- mothers. P&G was thanking moms for the US’s Olympic athletes- not just ‘parents,’ and definitely not dads. When I went to the campaign website, browsing through pictures and commercials at first made me think that 1) the US team only has female athletes, and 2) these female athletes only have moms (and super supportive ones at that). Closer examination showed that there are indeed a few males on the US team, and perhaps a couple of the athletes do have dads as well (I guess that didn’t surprise me all that much).
It’s a nice idea- dedicating a campaign to thank people in your life for supporting you along the way. But why only one’s mom? I couldn’t help but feel a little sad for all those fathers (or aunts, uncles, neighbors) who might have played pivotal roles in their children’s success. From concrete things like driving future Olympic athletes to the skating rink at 6am to comforting those same kids after a bad fall on the ice, whoever was there for these kids really helped them along. Why do we (or in this case maybe just Proctor & Gamble) assume that that person was a mom? During my entire K-12 education, my dad drove me to school in the morning, and most of the time, he picked me up in the afternoons, too. Should I ever win a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize, I’d like him to be thanked as well as my mom.
Why must we focus on a mom’s role in raising and supporting children? Yes, historically if a parent stays home to raise a child, it’s usually the mother. And historically, if a child is raised by one parent, it’s usually the mother. I’ll even suggest that mothers are still seen as more nurturing and supportive than fathers. Even members of this Facebook group want to show their love for their mothers.
Sure, it’s much catchier to say ‘thank you mom,’ rather than ‘thank you parents’ or ‘thank you supportive family members and friends,’ but should we focus on one parent when we could just as well assume that both parents played a large role in their child’s success? Consider also the athletes without supportive families, or even without moms. Last Sunday, Joannie Rochette’s mother died of a heart attack just days before Joannie was set to compete in Vancouver. How terrible it must have been for Joannie to stay composed and focused after hearing this news. This overemphasis of motherly love can in many ways be difficult for those who don’t have moms.
Realistically, it’s difficult (or rather, impossible) to censor advertising so as to not offend anyone, but after Kleenex’s ‘Get Mommed’ campaign, and the general display of moms in cooking, and cleaning, and home decorating commercials, it also seems a bit too easy to type cast moms and their roles in our society, and by doing so, neglect the roles and accomplishments of dads and other care takers. P&G was definitely on to something pretty neat when it decided to launch a campaign based on showing gratitude and appreciate for support, but its narrow scope ultimately prevented he campaign from reaching its full potential. At least their website has this nifty interactive feature where you can Thank a Mom yourself. Maybe I’ll go send one to someone supportive in my life, who may or may not be my mom.
6 Comments
March 1, 2010 at 9:41 am
” every Team USA member has someone who supported the day-to-day activities that brought them to their Olympic moment. For some that may be their mom; for others, it may be their dad, an aunt, a grandparent or another special supporter… it will recognize the sacrifices U.S. Olympic Team parents make to help their children’s dreams come true. It truly speaks to P&G’s commitment to bringing families even closer together.”
Actually, this is a new campaign, so perhaps P&G is just trying to key into social constructs already in place (however problematic) in order to garner support for their program. While the name and commercial may only recognize moms, the program does not ignore everyone else. I agree with you that the portrayal of “mom” as the only family member who supports U.S. Olympic team athletes is problematic, but from their marketing department’s perspective, sex sells, and that is one sexy mom in their commercial.
http://pgfamilyhomenews.blogspot.com/2010/02/procter-gamble-helps-team-usa-moms-get.html?utm_source=thankYouMom&utm_medium=mini-site&utm_campaign=teamUSA
March 1, 2010 at 10:12 am
Katie, I think that your article has a good point about the mom commercials. But P&G’s real message in the ads was, “Thanks, member of the households most likely to be the household purchasers of pharmaceuticals, cleaning supplies, personal care, and pet supplies.” “Thanks, member of the household whose heartstrings are most susceptible to our stock images and cheesy music.” “Thanks, member of the household, and remember us when you do shop.”
My dad usually mocks emotional ads. But he LOVES the kind of ads that are shown during the Superbowl. My mom literally teared up during the P&G commercial that featured “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Perhaps a broader campaign thanking more than moms could have increased their outreach to more potential consumers, but the ads do a good job of appealing to the consumers who 1) were the demographic watching the Olympics, and 2) are the demographic most likely to purchase P&G products.
March 1, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Also just a quick note…the children who get the most airtime are fair-skinned (overwhelmingly white), and the girl who gets the most time in the whole commercial is blonde, whereas the most prominent members of the American team this Olympics have been fairly diverse. How’s that for representing America? Oh wait I forgot only the parents of blonde white children use Tide!
And, more than just buying into stereotypes, the commercial gives women who choose to be “mothers” a sense of personal satisfaction. There’s nothing wrong with being a mother, and caring for children is an important role for society. But all too often, it’s the only contribution that women make that gets recognized, it’s the only one acceptable for women to make, and it’s the only one that society thanks them for.
March 1, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I agree with AnnieV. but in response to Brenda:
1. white people make up the majority of the people watching television at any given time. thus it makes sense to target them by putting white people in the commercials.
2. the sports in the winter olympics are sports that skew heavily white in both participation and in observation (curling, skiing, hockey etc). The American delegation is less racially diverse than you seem to think. So the audience is more heavily white than usual, thus making the above strategy even more appropriate.
3. Whites are more likely than other races (perhaps not Asians) to have the disposable income to buy a lot of P&G products. This again makes them the correct target for this marketing campaign.
(3.5 I’m tempted to say that white wives are more likely to be stay-at-home moms than are wives of other races, but I don’t know if this is true.)
4. Only women can bear children, thus we would expect the motif of bearing children to be closely associated with women. Women by virtue of being women are more adept at child-raising than men. This is obvious in the case of nursing, and less obvious but nonetheless true in the sort of care that P&G deals in. Because child-raising is a distinctively female activity, it’s what comes to mind when people think of a female “contribution”. If SMT does a good job as president you don’t think of that as a female contribution, you think of it as a sex-neutral contribution first, and only subsequently, if at all, as a contribution made by a female.
In short, child raising is done by women qua women, while basically every other job by women qua persons. Genuine feminists believe the latter conception of women; Identity Studies people cling to the former while lamenting that no one believes the latter.
March 2, 2010 at 1:59 am
Great post, Katie!
I sort of got what Coral Insects was saying–advertisers will do whatever they think will be successful/has been shown to be successful, problematic or not–and maybe it’s OK/inevitable sometimes? But that doesn’t mean that we should ignore the potential effects of these representations (effects which are hard to determine, but I think it would be naive to say that representations don’t have effects…). But then we get to point 4:
“Only women can bear children, thus we would expect the motif of bearing children to be closely associated with women.”
True but trivial, since bearing children does not equal raising children.
“Women by virtue of being women are more adept at child-raising than men.” “…child-raising is a distinctively female activity…”
My mom and dad might disagree. But then again, my dad cooks, so he probably doesn’t get it.
The fact that people think of child-raising as a distinctively female activity is a problem.
March 2, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Yeah, in that post I didn’t try to back up the claim that women are better at caring for children, nor do I really have time to now. My explanation is going to involve sociobiology, in particular the idea that because females have more invested in their offspring, there is an evolutionary reason that they should be better equipped to raise them to maturity than males are. Their “equipment” is both physical (breasts) and psychological (more interest in caring for children.
A couple points in proof of this claim:
1. In every species that exhibits parental behavior, it is the female that exhibits that behavior more than the male. Now, for reasons I can’t go into there is in humans high paternal investment. But this is of a different nature than the maternal investment (it’s more a provider and protector role than a nurturing one, and in any case it lasts only until about 4 years old).
2. A woman is always sure that her child is hers; a man can never be sure that a child is his. Thus we would expect more caution on the male’s part.