AT & T's Father-Positive Super Bowl Ad
February 4th, 2008 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
One of the pleasures of watching the Super Bowl was seeing AT & T's touching, father-positive ad "Monkey."
To watch the ad, click here and click on "Monkey."
View the ad on NFL.com by clicking here.
The ad, which came out last year, depicts us dads as we are--loving to our children, who love us in return.
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February 4th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Glenn this ad has been going on for a few weeks actually.
February 4th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
This is a very nice ad. I also like the car ad (for a hybrid) where the daughter wrongly assumes the dad was ignorant, and he tells her, "I didn't think I had to explain it."
There have been some recent rays of hope in an otherwise gloomy climate for the dads.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
I'm glad that the ad was shown to a large audience. The Superbowl's ratings are up there with the Oscars. I hope they show some positive ads during that.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Time to reward this company which has shown everyone an excellent reason to switch your local/home phone service to ATT.
I'm a big believer in showering one's business upon company's who "get it" on issues one cares about.
Many people may not be aware that ATT offers local service in many/most areas of the U.S. You can check your availability at this URL http://localization.att.com/loc/controller?ltype=res&unit=local
I say, move your home phone ATT, your cell phone to Cingular/ATT and your long distance to ATT.
And anyone here who works in purchasing or has telecoms purchasing authority, be sure to give ATT a fair crack at your company's business.
Let's reward a company which clearly has its head on straight about fathers.
Well done ATT.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
[...] To be fair, while BBDO does have a track record of anti-male commercials, they also produced the fine AT&T ad "Monkey," which can be seen here. [...]
February 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
AT&T also ran one of the most anti-career mother ads of all time. I often used the punchline to tease feminists.
The ad opens with a professionally dressed career woman busy on the telephone talking business. Her young daughter is trying to get her attention. The mother yells at her: "Can't you see I'm on the phone with a client?" and the daughter replies back with doe-eyed innocence:
"Mommy? When can I be a client?"
The mother then looks all guilty and hires a babysitter on the spot and takes the three daughters out on the beach. While they're screaming in the sand, she's on the phone trying to talk to the client (on her AT&T mobile phone) and hide the noise of the children.
There was just _sooo_ much about this commercial that must have ired the feminists. It exposed career mother guilt for all to see and in addition showed the career woman as half-assed as a worker. (Imagine if a man tried to get work done with kids screaming in the background.)
I don't think the AT&T ad wizards were trying to slap these women in the face. I think they were trying to use self-deprecating humor to reach out to them.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Gentlemen, before you run and give all your spare cash to AT&T, check out their website and look at their corporate culture. AT&T has massive reverse discrimination polices in addition to donating money to all kinds of leftist shakedown groups. It's big business partnered with big government at it's worst.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I love this ad. I also love the Cheerios ad, it is paired with a diaper brand (can't remember which one right now). In the evening Daddy is trying to get the baby to say "da-da", she keeps saying "ma-ma". The next morning, at breakfast, Daddy gives baby some Cheerios and goes back to his paper. Without prompting baby says "da-da". That is always the way it goes with babies. You try and try to get them to say something specific (could be any word) and they refuse. Sometime later, could be hours or days, the baby will spit out that word all on their own.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:22 am
This was a fantastic ad! Definitely heartwarming and show how dads and daughters can keep in touch even when they are apart. Best and most surprising ad of superbowl 2008!
February 6th, 2008 at 2:59 am
PolishKnight says, "AT&T also ran one of the most anti-career mother ads of all time."..."There was just _sooo_ much about this commercial that must have ired the feminists. It exposed career mother guilt for all to see and in addition showed the career woman as half-assed as a worker." First I must admit to not having seen this particular commercial and that this is speculative of what you have described. It's hard to believe they would use female guilt to sell. Perhaps it was to be taken as stress; for this woman is responsible for everything - career, the kids (baby-sitter instead of Dad) etc. The inflated responsibility is normally what sells. Like I said though - speculative.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Anonymous Pamphleteer says, "I say, move your home phone ATT, your cell phone to Cingular/ATT and your long distance to ATT."
AT&T gave the Feds access to all web and phone traffic. (Bush granted them protection in exchange.)
They also censored this Lallapalooza web cast performance by Pearl Jam - "During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast: - “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and - “George Bush find yourself another home.”
One add won't make up for this in my opinion.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:56 am
This ad was also mother-positive. The mother points out to the child, look Daddy's home.
February 6th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Where do we send the appreciative email that says, "keep it up?"
If we send e-mails protesting some ads, we should equally send e-mails praising the others.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
lane said: "First I must admit to not having seen this particular commercial and that this is speculative of what you have described. It's hard to believe they would use female guilt to sell. Perhaps it was to be taken as stress; for this woman is responsible for everything - career, the kids (baby-sitter instead of Dad) etc. The inflated responsibility is normally what sells. Like I said though - speculative."
Agreed. I don't think AT&T ad execs signed off on an ad that was designed to bash career mothers and was aiming for what you suggested: showing the mother stressed out and using her mobile to escape to the beach.
But... that line was killer: "Mommy? When can I be a client?" I have repeated that to feminists who also saw the ad and it enraged them because they know that there's a "mommy war" out there with career women and SAH mothers on different sides of the battlefield.
It's clear the child guilted her mother into a beach trip. In theory, I guess this could happen with men as well (indeed, this ad was about the father reminding his daughter he was thinking about her while he was away) BUT with a key difference: There was another parent around to look after the child and greet the father when he came home. He didn't just leave her with strangers like the career woman was doing in the other ad.
There's another ad with United where a business executive is transformed into a knight who presents his proposal to other knights and fights a dragon and comes home and presents his son with a paper mache dragon. So apparently, this ad designed to tug at men's heartstrings apparently is about the father returning home from a trip or from work.
Perhaps... that explains why ads targeted towards women tend to be so openly hateful of men. So many of the women don't have a positive way to relate towards men. Either he's a lazy slob who needs cleaning products to clean up after him, or someone to slap around for not holding her door, or even not there altogether like the AT&T ad. The second biggest victims of feminism are women. They just don't know it.
February 8th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Michael H made a good point, "This ad was also mother-positive. The mother points out to the child, look Daddy's home."
This ad is family-positive. That is how it should be.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:10 am
[...] I then suggested that readers who also thought the ad was over the line should express their views to Pepsi. I also provided contact information for BBDO, the agency which created the ad. I also noted, "To be fair, while BBDO does have a track record of anti-male commercials, they also produced the fine AT&T ad 'Monkey,' which can be seen here." [...]