Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Daddy bloggers

I didn't even know that there was an annual conference of daddy bloggers. Fortunately I read the newspaper with all the news that's fit to print. The NY Times reports:
THE hapless, bumbling father is a stock character in product marketing. He makes breakfast for dinner and is incapable of handling, or sometimes even noticing, a soggy diaper. He tries desperately to hide the crumb-strewn, dirt-streaked evidence of his poor parenting before the mother gets home.

This is an image that many fathers who attended the Dad 2.0 Summit — a meeting of so-called daddy bloggers and the marketers who want to reach them — have come to revile. They are proud to be involved in domestic life and do not want to serve as the comic foil to the supercompetent mother. ...

Last year, the daddy blogosphere erupted when Huggies released a commercial that showed a group of fathers and their babies, with a voice-over that said, “To prove Huggies diapers and wipes can handle anything, we put them to the toughest test imaginable: Dads, alone with their babies, in one house, for five days.” ...

Huggies replaced the commercial with a spot that had already been shot, with a different voice-over: “To prove Huggies diapers can handle anything, we asked real dads to put them to the test — with their own babies, at naptime, after a very full feeding.” The subtle difference in wording implied that fathers were discerning diaper experts, rather than neglectful idiots.
That's an improvement?! It is too subtle for me.
As mommy bloggers and their readers can attest, sponsorships carry risks. The Federal Trade Commission can fine the blogger and the sponsoring company for not revealing the relationship. And bloggers perceived as simply shilling for companies without regard for quality will lose respect.
Okay, I will be sure to reveal any diaper sponsors.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The saddest thing in all this (other than it took years for people to take Dads complaints about these commercials seriously) is that its pathetic that all you have to do to separate a woman from her dollars (or her husbands) is to degrade men.

You would expect a few women to say hey, I have a Father, a husband, a son, a brother, and a Grandfather and I don't think its right they have to look like idiots to sell me Taco Bell. But....no such luck.