Washington Post ^ | 6 Feb 17 | Thomas Heath
Building supplies company 84 Lumber tackled a heap of controversy over the weekend with its carefully-crafted — yet inconclusive — 90-second Super Bowl ad featuring a Mexican mother and daughter embarking on a difficult journey north that left the viewer wondering where they ended up.
At the end of the ponderous tale, script appears on the screen: “The will to succeed is always welcome here.”
That wasn’t the full story. The Super Bowl ad asked viewers to visit the 84 Lumber website if they wanted the rest of the story. The website version included a five-minute “director’s cut” version that concludes with the pair entering the United States through a door in a towering border wall, a direct take on one of the most combustible topics in the country today. Viewers logged on to see, and 84 Lumber’s site was overwhelmed by the traffic.
[The five most political Super Bowl commercials]
That and other commercials spurred a backlash on social media and elsewhere. Some viewers accused 84 Lumber of promoting illegal immigration. Others supported the Pennsylvania company’s values that promote striving and success.
The ads cames just a week after President Trump raised a national firestorm with his order to temporarily ban refugees and immigrants from seven mostly Muslim-dominated countries as part of his national security policy.
84 Lumber wasn’t alone in the Super Bowl ad pile on. Many other big brands, from beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev to Audi, Airbnb and Kia autos used their Super Bowl time — at $5 million per 30 seconds — to break through. The challenge is to get viewers, whether they are chatting at a party or standing among a scrum at a bar, to pause and take notice — and maybe talk about it later.
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Shame on 84 lumber. I hope they suffer the same fate at Target, whose sales have fallen dramatically.
84 Lumber, in a statement, denied they were promoting illegal immigration! Yeah, right. Then they said the ad was supposed to be "patriotic."
Hardy Magerko says she personally helped develop the commercial and its striking imagery, but her personal beliefs don’t play into the commercial.
“This came from the heart and I didn’t do it for personal gain,” she says. “It’s not about me or my beliefs or the wall, it’s about individuals… treating people with dignity and respect.”
Baloney. And now 84 Lumber is claiming they had a 50% positive rating for the ad, which is complete rubbish. The ad tested horribly to pre-superbowl audiences, but they ran with it anyway.
Now the company is backtracking even more, claiming the ad is "in the eye of the beholder" and they only wanted to portray "grit and determination." If that was the case, why didn't they portray average Americans building their home, returning veterans buying lumber, or any other scenario?
These jack asses are plying us with propaganda, pure and simple. Don't fall for it.
