So while it's true that we're happy Noah Kalina is getting residuals from that Dodge Charger Superbowl ad that we posted about a while back, not all of us were exactly thrilled with the tone and spirit of the spot. This advertisement in particular had me considering other ad campaigns in recent memory whose tone, implied/projected value set and general, well, meanness, had become desired notes-to-be-hit in delivering a product message. It made me wonder, in the realms of corporate branding and vision, how does one measure the success of pointedly targeting one half of the population while openly disparaging the other half?

De Beers Diamonds ad campaign, Fall 2009

One of the most blatant proponents of this ethos has got to be De Beers, the famous diamond proprietor that in the 1940s completely made up the now "common knowledge" claim that the socially acceptable amount of money to be spent on an engagement ring equals exactly two months' worth of any eager groom's salary.

Two Months Salary by Lee Gainer

Riffing off the witty cynicism and look-and-feel of the de-motivational posters from despair.com, the De Beers print campaigns have become the go-to sentiment for the new Male Maudlin Mystique, in which the purchasing power of diamonds can garner you drinking time with your buddies, Saturday tee times, unprintable sexual favors, and an end to endless nagging and complaining. Just like the kinds of people who might have the kinds of jobs that find themselves identifying with the "demotivational" pithy adages, the same pool of men will likely find themselves one day having to buy engagement rings for women that they will marry and start families with, and then later have to buy more diamonds for in order to negotiate and barter for what they really want to be doing with their free time.

Fast forward to Superbowl XLIV and that Dodge Charger commercial. Within days of its airing, a response piece showed up on YouTube. Filmmaker MacKenzie Fegan made it, after getting into a fight with her boyfriend over it:

The next day I was iChatting with the boyfriend, and I asked him what he thought of the Dodge Charger commercial. He freakin' loved it, and bam, now we're in a chat fight. He made the point that he was sure there were, say, chocolate commercials that were basically the same thing except from a woman's perspective, and I shot back with a couple lines of hypothetical dialogue: 'I will do the majority of the housework while maintaining a career. I will make 75 cents for every dollar you make.' He said, 'That would be a pretty compelling commercial.'

Part of what astounds me in the tone and logic of the De Beers and subsequent Dodge Charger ads is not the cynical wish-fulfillment dream of dysfunctional relationships, but the eagerness to render such cynicism so transparent. It's a measure of success for these ad execs that men are walking by these ads in subways or plazas, or leaning back in their couches during a football game and shaking their heads in wonder saying, "It's SO TRUE!"

So it's refreshing and somewhat redemptive when a savvy woman can take that cynicism, invert it, and play it back at both sides of the divide at the rate of nearly a quarter million views in less than two weeks. MacKenzie Fegan, you have our respect.