Tears of a Clown

As I have mentioned before, this year has been extremely busy.

Cars, beers, pizza, phone companies, even talking cows, you name it I've worked on it. Not bad for a 44 year old trying to keep pace with today's content creators who are often asked to keep the idea machine cranking on all cylinders, 24/7/365.

But there's a trend afoot. A trend that threatens to knock me off my pedestal and leave me peddling my wares in the world of pharmaceuticals.

Advertisers and agencies have got it in their heads that the best way to persuade consumers is to make them cry. Once they're reaching for the Kleenex tissues, the reasoning goes, they'll soon be reaching for their checkbooks and credit cards. Oh I'm sorry millennial readers, their bit coins.

Maybe you've noticed it.

Touching homages to motherhood, fatherhood, lesbian parenting, interracial parenting, two-dad parenting, physical disability, mental disability, blah, blah, blah.

Someone, impossibly more cynical than myself, put his or her finger on the collective phenomena that is sweeping through the planning offices of agencies across America and coined the phrase--Sadvertising.

Sadvertising, indeed.

Remember how your mom dressed you in the morning?
Remember she gave you baths?
Made you those smiley pancakes?
Found you clothing that didn't itch?
Remember how she held you when your dog died?
And stood up for you when you were being bullied by that Jenkins kid?
Isn't it time you did something for her?

Radial steel belted tires are now just $199. Buy three tires and the fourth tire is free.

Offer not valid in Tennessee, certain restrictions do apply. 

Well, as you might imagine, I don't get called in for these kind of assignments. They're not in my wheelhouse. They're not in my zip code. I'm not sure they're even in the same galaxy.

I suppose that's a blessing. The last thing I want to do is spend hours in an edit bay mulling over takes of actors dropping crocodile tears.

"I like the first take. But in the second take there was some lip quiver action. If we could get more heads and tails on that take, we'd be money."