The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has criticized Pepsi for an ad that is ‘irresponsible’ because it shows teens engaging in questionable conduct? What were they doing, eating at Chick-fil-a without knowing if they were supposed to bring a lesbian? Injecting heroin? Quoting ‘jobs saved or gain’ numbers as real?
No, they were on a snowboard off the slopes.
Basically, the teen does a bunch of cool stuff but finally screws up and falls headfirst to the ground and we get white noise and the strapline, “Don’t Dew this at home”. Then they spray Mountain Dew all over themselves.
Really, we have to consider something. First, my generation has gotten a lot of things right, namely kids’ cartoons. When I was young cartoons, were crap; I mean “Laff-a-lympics”? Look at the ads in any 1970s comic book and see an ad and try to recall if you ever heard of those things unless you watched them on Saturday mornings; terrible. But kid’s cartoons in more recent times, 1990s and up, are quite good. But when it comes to playing nanny over all interesting conduct, we have lost our minds. It is as if today’s teens are mindless puppets and if they see a cigarette ad (pot and sex are always okay to the ban everything, social authoritarian mindset) or a kid in a commercial doing anything cool, they might kill themselves. Do they have a point? Did I try to jump my bike over a huge gap in Caesar’s Palace and break all my bones? No, I did not but one guy who did watch all that cool stuff does things 10 times better than anything Evel Knievel ever did – he was inspired by watching. Robbie Maddison can not only jump 300 feet, he can land on top of buildings in Las Vegas.(1)
By cocooning modern children, we cocoon a certain measure of creativity. We also make them pretty insecure about the world, since we teach them they have no judgment without The Other guiding them. Here is the super-dangerous ad that got banned because kids needed another reason not to trust anyone over the age of 30:
NOTE:
(1)