But Britney, What About Me?
I didn't watch the Super Bowl, but I've seen just about all the ads that were shown during the telecast thanks to news outlets like CNN.
Perhaps I live in a vacuum, but I didn't hear anything about the Britney Spears' Pepsi commerical leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. Truth be known, I could really care less. However after seeing the commerical first hand, I feel gipped.
What gives with Pepsi's massive memory loss? The commercial touches all the expected decades, like soda-foundation 50s, Beach-Blanket-Bingo 60s, Flower-Child Summer of Love 1969, and then....Robert Palmer? 1989?
Where did the years of 1971 to 1988 go? What about punk rock? Disco? Duran Duran?
I'm beginning to think something just didn't work when viewed in the editing room and was cut towards the end, for that's one hell of a massive cultural gap to just overlook.
More >> You're in the Britney Generation via Salon
Comments
We're shocked! Shocked?..that Pepsico did not produce a balanced or thorough overview of pop music and culture in their multimillion dollar broadcast ADVERTISEMENT?
We can't know what was trimmed out, but we certainly know that every element of the production is aimed with confident caution at promoting the brand image and selling the sodie pop with blandly appealing, appealingly bland cliche bouquets.
The production concept and intended catchy familiarity have everything to do with Pepsi's own past and present ways of kneading its media presence into pop culture, and nothing to do with accurate historical summary of anything or with nods of recognition to anything that doesn't fit the easy retro angle. Why would it try for either? The company people and ad people know how to keep the identity velcro in shape, how to help support market share on this section of foundation called "comfortably limp deja vu".
I ain't on a rant or crusade....just noting it's what they do normally and plainly. They 've plugged a big name/face with mostly safe associations into a spot for a big audience, spinnin' the reliable wheel of regurgitation and reinforcement. It can be viewed as harmless fun or par for the dismaying course. Either way it proclaims its own ID: a vacancy within a looping vacancy.
Far from "massive memory loss", it's a demonstration of the commercial industry's accumulated hypertested memory of what works -- presenting a precise weight and flavor for a desired impression and response. Prospects of consumer unease, of critical hiccups related to what is NOT in the spot, are insubstantial enough to add up to nuthin' by the time the thing shows in the worldwide theater of selling.
Abandon all hope of something else, ye who enter there.
Posted by: pablo at February 19, 2002 10:57 AM
