The Coronavirus Has Captured TV Commercials

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ST LOUIS, Ill. - April 14, 2020 - PRLog -- And We Didn't Even See It Coming..... 🙄

In TV commercials made not long ago and still on the air, people crowd into bars, or hug, or eat from salad bars in restaurants. Looking like reckless relics of some past age of dangerous Know Nothingism, the actors engage in what now are outlaw behaviors, conducted in horrifying proximity.

For Sandals Resorts, unmasked, ungloved men and women cavort carefree on a beach, oblivious to the advancing menace.

Even in a commercial for Cooper University Health Care in Camden, doctors shake hands with patients in imprudent gestures of good will.

Newer commercials strive to reflect how we are currently living with threat, like Burger King offering delivery with limited contact. But many prior ads were already paid for, experts say. So, we watch them unspool in a mix of discomfort and fascination.

We are not the same audience today as we were when actor Dennis Quaid started flying coach in a packed plane for Esurance; AT&T shills began playing endless rounds of bingo; 5-Hour Energy guys first sweated and rebounded on a basketball court, or vacationers took to a crowded pool, then ate together in an ad for the Poconos.

"Let us take care of you"

More and more, TV viewers are seeing a new kind of commercial that references — without being specific — the crisis America faces.

Burger King intones, "Let us take care of you. We minimize contact during the delivery process."

Lincoln tells us, "More than ever, home is your sanctuary," as the car company promises to drive a loaner to your house when your vehicle needs servicing.

Local car company Gary Barbera airs a local commercial that advises, "Stay home and let Gary Barbera bring the store to your door."

Companies "deserve kudos for quickly going in and changing their creative" work, said Amazeen of Boston University. "If you're a brand, you should be doing that, like the Ford commercials (https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2020/03/19/ford...) that now say, if you lose your job, you won't have to pay for six months."

This is a rare time for business to actually look heroic by appearing to care about customers during a crisis, noted Yarrow of Golden Gate University.

"But the ads can't be self-serving," she said. "When times are tough, we are more emotional than usual, and nothing resonates more with us than stories of human caring and dignity and positiveness. So, if a company reconfigures assembly lines to make hand sanitizer, that doesn't feel opportunistic. That feels like caring."

*How far will these trends will go, and where the road will lead is unclear but as of now, even Television Is Quarantined inside 'The Box' looking out into a Whole New World:

GMEDIA/Steve G. Galiher

[source: Alfred Lubrano]
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