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In TV Ads, the Laugh's on Men. . .Isn't It?
 Some spots portray them as dunderheads, but guys don't
seem to care.
By APRIL SMITH, Special to The Times
 It was a hazy
Sunday afternoon in Santa Monica, and inside JP's Bar & Grill, Tyler
Masse and Erik Horine were happy. They were happy because the Patriots had
won, but mostly they were happy because they had moved to Los Angeles just
a week before and already had found a great apartment. Soon their phone
would be hooked up and they'd be "getting a start in life," Masse as a
writer and Horine as a tennis pro.
Neither seemed concerned that on the TV
screens just over their heads, hopeful young men like themselves were
routinely being portrayed as total rejects.
It's not as if they'd never noticed the
commercials during sports events in which men are seen behaving like clods
or stumbling over furniture in the presence of women. In one commercial,
their heads shrink to the size of a pin, in another, they become
transmogrified into frogs whose skills in life are reduced to the
well-timed burp.
"We just don't think
about it," Masse said. "It's just TV." Horine studied advertising in
college. "In today's market, you have to do what sells," he observed.
"When we're watching sports, the world stops. For about three hours, maybe
we're not so intelligent."
It would
seem, under certain circumstances such as the testosterone high of a
ballgame, the advertising community wants men to see themselves that way.
As Horine and Masse gripped their Bud Lites, eyes on the monitors, the
Mets' Edgardo Alfonzo hit a two-run double. It was the fifth inning of the
final game of the National League division series, and a crowd of 56,245
in Shea Stadium jumped to its feet and bounced up and down and as if
they'd been given pogo sticks at the gate.
Wouldn't you think men would rather
identify with sports heroes like Alfonzo than sports fools, as in the
current Norelco spot? In it, a couple of guys try out a new electric
shaver on a riding mower and at an office desk, then one returns to his
seat at the ballpark and goes into a state of helpless delirium when a
sexy woman strokes his cheek--until the jealous girlfriend whacks him in
the face with a plastic bat.
"Maybe it
gets men in touch with their 'inner loser,' " speculated Los Angeles
psychotherapist Douglas Brayfield. "It's interesting men don't perceive
this picture of themselves as offensive."
There are some very good reasons why
they don't. Consider this classic ad for Heineken: Two guys are sitting at
a bar. One sees a beautiful woman. "Hey, you over there," he says, giving
her the smile. "Stay where you are," warns the woman. The guy and his pal
exchange a look. The guy tries again: "You know, you're awfully pretty."
Her reply: "You're an idiot." The pal shrugs sympathetically. Then we see
the word "Heineken" and hear, "Have a good night."
* * * "Advertising tries to
reflect the culture," said Linda Kaplan, now president and chief executive
of the New York-based Kaplan/Thaler Group, which oversaw that famous
Heineken campaign. "It's a mini-hologram of what's going on."
To better understand the culture of men
in bars, Kaplan's creative team hired an anthropologist to record how men
acted after one, two or three drinks. The ads, based on real overheard
conversations, were designed to be sophisticated and amusing and to make
men feel comfortable in potentially embarrassing situations--to let them
know Heineken understands and that we've all been there.
"Sometimes," said Kaplan, "a brand can
break the 'brand barrier' and become part of the terminology and social
behavior. Budweiser, for example, has been very successful in finding the
things that express that 'beer head' frame of mind."
It's not just that those frogs and
lizards are memorable. Watching them gives you the woozy feeling you've
already had a couple of drinks.
In the
"theater of persuasion," as Kaplan describes her company, which has won
many awards for its original duck-quacking campaign for the Aflac
insurance company, you must go beyond the message and be entertaining, or
people will change the channel.
Often
the tactic in beer ads is to zap you right into that two-drink head, where
the world is silly, sloppy and surreal. You'll notice men are always seen
at the bar in groups, implying that one of the rewards of drinking is
bonding with the pack, since these poor slobs conveniently keep striking
out with women.
And if you're wondering
what makes men so gullible, it's because by the time they're old enough to
legally buy their first beer, they've probably been exposed to these kinds
of messages for years. One of the covert strategies of the advertising
community is that beer commercials are often addressed to underage
drinkers, for whom sophomoric behavior is, understandably, the ideal.
But judging from the easygoing reactions
to the topic at JP's Bar & Grill, not everyone is worried that male
sports fans are being demeaned on national television. In fact, some say
it is incorrect even to characterize these ads as "dumb."
"They're genius," said Masse of the
Budweiser series. "Everyone remembers them." Others nodded in agreement.
Erin Duobek, an avid football fan who
comes to JP's every Sunday afternoon with her husband, said these ads were
"not a put-down" but reality.
"If a
beautiful girl walks in, men are going to look. Men are simple creatures,"
she said with a shrug. "It shows their simplicity. What catches their
attention? Sports, women, money, food, and you're done."
* * * April Smith is the
author of "Be the One," a literary thriller about a woman baseball scout,
published by Knopf.
 Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories
about: Television
Advertising, Men,
Humor.
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