Saatchi+Saatchi

Saatchi & Saatchi New York for JC Penney.

So this is obviously much longer than anything that would be seen on TV, but it's so good it should be! Saatchi took the whole dog house mentality that guys have been dodging for generations, and took it to a whole new level by showing guys everywhere what really happens in the dog house. I'll admit this short feature film version is a little bitty bit too long and hovers between being really humorous and riding out a joke for way too long, but I wasn't bored by this video. Did I want it to move a little faster? Yes. Did I watch the whole thing? Yes. So I guess the length can be overcome because the short film is still a minority in the world of advertising media. Also, this particular spot has the ability to appeal to, or at the very least entertain, men from various age or ethnic demographics because the mantra of the dog house is well-known to men in relationships everywhere.

This does have a tendency to perpetuate the clueless husband/boyfriend stereotype, as well as promote the idea that men have to buy their wife/girlfriend a nice gift in order to be a "good" partner. We don't have to look far to see stereotypes in ads; we use stereotypes to set the scene for a short (usually 30 or 60 seconds) story, so sometimes stereotypes are necessary in ads just so that audiences can understand what is going on. When discussing the danger of stereotypes in advertising, it is easy to point to common stereotypes of women like the stay-at-home mom, but it is just as easy, but often forgotten, to identify stereotypes of men. The men in the dog house for JC Penney are a clear example of how men get pigeon-holed and narrowly labeled as forgetful, domestically impaired beings. It's definitely not good to perpetuate stereotypes in ads, we live in 2010 and we are way too politically correct to be using old stereotypes, but it is often resorted to in order to give context quickly to a situation or scene in an ad.