In one of those rare instances when I actually find idle gaps and manage to sit down in front of the idiot box, I punch the clicker southwards of the channel menu with a partial nervous twitch.
I mention this because when I say southwards of the channel menu I mean local channels. Now before you jump into accusations of elitism and fire off an angry, flaming remark in the comments section, may I remind you that I grew up during the '80s, which means, for my generation, cable is not a television subscription service but a wire connected to an antenna that someone has to keep on rotating to get better screen reception. Don't laugh, this is serious business and woe is the man who will be forced to climb up the rooftop to shake the antenna when the screen goes all zigzaggy during a crucial third quarter of a basketball game, the particularly tense scene in Regal Shocker, or for some people, the Q&A segment of a Ms. Universe coverage.
The point of all this is: I have a particular affinity for local programming. Until this past decade when television stepped on the banana peel of "masa" ratings war, slid off into the mediocre ditch and was unable to get up.
So you must understand the neurotic anxiety of clicking into a random local channel and beholding, say, Daniel Padilla singing, hellbent into making music obsolete.Or having your lunch soundtracked by aimless banter, over-recycled jokes and a menagerie of unbelievably untalented starlets in tacky cocktail outfits being serenaded by matinee idols who sound like they are in the middle of a massive hiccup and about to throw up undigested squirrels they had for lunch.
I exaggerate.
And if you thought that you have descended into the abyss given the sorry state of local programming, the advertising will confirm your suspicion that Hell has no basement. Majority of local advertising are flickering proofs that Hell is a bottomless well.
I exaggerate. Or am I?
So I cheer a little bit every time I wander into the gates of hell and beheld this ad:
The first time I saw this work my auto-enthusiastic exclamation was monosyllabic: "WOW!"
It's a very classy, sophisticated piece of work. Spiced with double entendre and sexy innuendos, the rich visuals and that sparkly-sexy-moody music delivers the message across smartly with panache, puns and pitch. Work of this caliber is to be encouraged - it's a testament to the brilliance of its creators and the courage of the client who refuses to give in to the least common denominator school of ad-making.
Then this humorous piece came later on:
Again, a hilarious take on most Filipinos' habit of making 'kupit' if he can get away with it. The punch line is a direct pun. Good job!
Just when those two ads seem to be a fluke - random bright sparks in the sea of triteness, I encountered this one:
It stops just right from tipping towards saccharine cheesiness and charms your socks off with its unapologetic, sheer optimism!
Just when every smart viewer was deeply convinced that there is indeed a bright spot in local advertising, and that the client-agency relationship must be on perpetual honeymoon given all the client trust-creative output ratio, this ad just might change all that:
I was passing through my living room, rushing towards the bathroom when this spot hit the screen.
I froze on my tracks, chilled with disbelief.
My jaw hit the parquet with a comatose thud.
What is the message here?
Hunger results to ugliness and expensive meals make it doubly ugly. Get the value meals and as the chirpy girl cheerfully exhorts the viewer "Don't get hungry, don't get ugly."
Now people who know me will attest that I am one of those folks with the most warped sense of humor. Twisted things amuse me and I take every absurd situation with a pinch oh hilarity. Hey, I laugh at everyone in the same measure I laugh at my very own idiocy.
But P50 McSavers Meal #dontbepanget seems to be an exercise in lapsed, misfired judgement. I'm all for a good joke, for not steering everything into UptightTown.
However, try and look into the context of the huge slice of the population and this ad will have a different flavor.
In a country bursting in the seams with people scraping barely to get out of the gaping poverty trench, I am not sure it is an appetizing proposition to tell all the hungry people that they are ugly.
That anyone without fifty bucks and suffering from starvation is hideous-looking.
The whole spot runs for thirty seconds but the cringing, unpleasant aftertaste stays with you all day.
