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If you've ever worked in an office, you've been in "that" meeting. You know, when one original fantastic idea gets so much input that it turns into a Franken-idea and winds up being a total nightmare. I think, perhaps, that's what happened with the Huggies campaign to highlight dads on the job with their new ad campaign.
Putting real dads to the test with Huggies seems cute. Let's put more dads in diaper ads, in fact. In house cleaning ads, in grocery shopping ads. This, I am all for. I think what went wrong with the Huggies situation -- and thus had parents everywhere rightly teed off -- is when Huggies decided to take a modern idea, and throw some 1950s values right in the middle. Oops.
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
See? There are some cute elements. Dads rocking their babies (although notice the plush "dad chair" vs. a regular old rocking one). Unfortunately the set up gives the dig: Dads. Alone with their babies. At nap time. After a very full feeding. Oh, the drama! As if fathers holding babies is revolutionary. When in fact, all those babies and dads look pretty dang comfortable with each other.
But that's not the ad that parents are truly irritated about. That one has been cleansed from the Internets, as apparently having dads watching sports while ignoring their babies full diapers was, in fact, too offensive to keep up on the Facebook page. Because dads are not all sports-obsessed lazy slobs who don't care if baby hangs out in her own crap. Yep, that's offensive -- to dads and moms.
Still, I wonder if we shouldn't give Huggies another chance to get it right. After all, it probably started off as a really swell idea.
Do you think these Huggies commercials make men look stupid?
Image via YouTube
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