Canadian cell phone commercial depicts man switching teams

First of it's a commercial appeals to younger generations who are the majority clients of cell phone companies. I've seen that particular commercial a few times. If it's a big controversial, I did not hear anything about it. Whether people on this side of the pond for or against it, it's not worth the effort to make it an issue. Like you said it's a 15 seconds commercial.

As I have regularly posted on my blog and others, there are those who sit on the edge of their seats waiting with heightened anticipation for that moment that something will happen that they can be professionally offended about.

Before Fido was swallowed whole by the monolithic Rogers conglomerate, they were the brand for young people... Telus wasn't big across the country at the time, Rogers was too corporate, and Bell was too stuffy (and their customer service has declined drastically over the past few years... anyone remember the billing fiasco?). Fido was the young and hip company, and when they were independent, they were the ones who didn't have service contracts.

At least they are keeping the same style of commercials going.

But, for a brief flash at the end of the commercial, some will get all huffy about it promoting a "lifestyle" and other assorted nonsense. Time to get their collective heads out of their butts, give it a good shake, and have a breath of fresh air, instead of inhaling their own flatulence on a regular basis.

Really, isn't it about time that companies appealed to everyone in their advertising?

Every time I think we're taking a step forward, it would seem it goes backward again.

In a typical evening, it's just another commercial to be ignored for the sake of a pee break before your program comes back on again. Stop being so friggin' significant.

I think it's cute. People do change, after all, and not everybody falls into the gay/straight categories. 

François
---------------
http://gaycomicslist.free.fr

I saw this ad on tv a couple of months ago, but as I recall it was a very "blink and you missed it" moment, because afterwards I wasn't even certain that's what the ad had ended on. I hoped it had been, decided it had, and moved on. I certainly didn't find it offensive.

Looking at the second set of comments you linked to, I am really confused by people who don't understand advertising shorthand. Unless the ad tells us the other man has just lost a loved one, two men cuddling on the couch = romantic situation. Ads this short don't really have room for unintentional subtext.

It's fine to point out Western society (or North American society at least) is pretty screwed up when it comes to platonic male affection, but I think it's ridiculous to say this ad ends on a platonic note. There are a variety of ways it could have read that way, but without explicitly stating it, the context of this ad makes believing it to be platonic pretty bizarre.

It's really tiresome how in media it's apparently only possible to convince straight people that actual LGBT content was included by making things more than G-rated. I suppose these can't be the same people who are also convinced that SpongeBob SquarePants is offensively gay, which means there are at least two different types of annoying homophobic straight people - the ones who think the "agenda" is infringing on them all the time, and the ones who are convinced it isn't there when it is to the point of creating entire inexplicable storylines to make it go away.

Knowing now for certain he is cuddling with a man at the end, I think it's pretty obvious that he's bisexual. And since this ad is all show and no tell, I think that's also the safest assumption to make; there's no reason, I feel, to assume even that he's a gay man figuring out his sexuality. Bisexual serial monogamists are going to have partners of different genders over time (and I'm pretty certain if that had ended with him and a third different woman, there would be no question that he was a serial monogamist). I'll admit to being biased: it's the assumption I made at the time, and it's the one I still want to make, being bisexual myself and seeing so little of that on tv, especially in the ads.

I cut this from one of the preceding paragraphs, but I think it stands as another reason to like this ad, not just find it inoffensive: From a storytelling - which, yes, I'm on of those weird people interested in storytelling in advertising - point of view, I think it makes sense that they weren't doing something more overt. He has aged over the course of ad, and I think the casual intimacy of cuddling on the couch says a lot more about settling down than the sort of making out he was doing with the first girlfriend.

I think overall it's actually kind of a sweet ad. Thank you for linking to it; I'd forgotten about it and it's nice to have a reminder that people other than Ikea have LGBT-friendly ads.

If there was controversy, I sure haven't heard a peep from anything, newspapers, radios, blogs. It was kinda cute but totally blink and you missed it, but I'm correct, haven't there been a few allusions to gay life now on commercials? At least from what I've seen on Canadian TV and ads.

Vance

___________________

http://tapeworthy.blogspot.com