A few days after the birth of his child, Jay-Z announced a less exciting development: He was going to shill for Duracell! In a statement from January, Hov explained, "I believe in the future of wireless energy and I believe that Duracell Powermat is the company to bring on the revolution. I'm partnering with Duracell Powermat because they're providing the solutions for the future." (Also, presumably, he's partnering with Duracell Powermat because they paid him a lot of money.)
Yesterday, a commercial so shocking, so confusing, so hilarious, and so unacceptable made the internet rounds and accumulated criticism at a rate previously unseen on the Information Superhighway. This commercial, a Burger King Crispy Chicken Snack Wrap advertisement starring the Queen of Hip-Hop/Soul, Mary J. Blige, seemed more like a comedy sketch than an actual spot approved (in all seriousness) by Burger King. While the initial reaction was pure backlash, having passed the 12-hour mark watching, sharing, and discussing the commercial (which has been removed from Burger King's official YouTube account) has shown me that if you keep pressing "replay," the way you feel will begin to change.
Whether you're an ecstatic Giants fan, a bereft New Englander, or one of the seemingly 14 billion Twitter users who announced a total lack of interest in the "Super Game," we can all agree on one thing: Giant corporations spent the GDP of a failing European debtor state on commercials in the hope that people on the Internet would write stories like this one. And so, in fulfillment of our end of the implicit Super Bowl contract with the automobile manufacturers, monolithic breweries, and snack-food concerns who make bathroom breaks nigh impossible (what, you think we're going to pause the DVR and risk falling 30 seconds behind the tweets, you maniacs?), we're going to hand out a bunch of very, very prestigious awards to last night's advertainment spectacles, mostly in hopes this post will go viral and be sponsored by CareerBuilder.com's Depressed Office Monkeys next year.
It's been put forth that in a recession customers are more likely to splurge on impulse buys, things they consider small luxuries. Estee Lauder's chairman Leonard Lauder dubbed this trend the "lipstick index" in 2001, but since then lipstick sales haven't increased accordingly as everything else has continued to go to hell. But certain things have managed to continue trending upwards, eking out tiny squares of market growth. Places where the novelties boom has been noticeable: nail polish, candy, and soda. Tobacco sales also went up just when everything else started trending downward. Everything might suck more and more on a day to day level but DAMNED IF THIS APPLE PIE GUM ISN'T SO DELICIOUS.
