From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
The Fear Factor
No TV ads this Sept. 11? It's self-indulgent symbolism.
Many companies, afraid that viewers might think them tactless for advertising their wares on a most solemn occasion, are planning to treat the anniversary of 9/11 as a No TV Commercials Day.
This is depressing, not to mention silly and unhelpful.
I say this not out of love for the TV commercial, for of that I have little. Normally, I would welcome an ad-free day on the box as the equivalent of having died and gone to heaven. Instead, I choose to criticize the no-commercials brigade for its wrongheadedness--and its misplaced piety.
Here's the story. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, written by Suzanne Vranica and Emily Nelson, the television networks "are planning elaborate programming marathons [on Sept. 11] to commemorate" the victims of last year's terrorist attack.
Inevitably, some of the mood will be somber, and some of the tone elegiac. As a result, the sales representatives of the TV networks are struggling to sell commercial airtime for the day to companies that will just not bite.
Take Dell Computers--whose idea of persuasion is an ad campaign starring "Steven," a dude whose slickness is believed to emanate from his slackness. Dell has decided to pull all its ads from TV networks that will have news shows on Sept. 11, on the grounds that the "irreverent" Steven would be a jarring presence in the midst of all the reflection.
(A message for Dell: Steven is jarring on any day of the year. He's irksome, offensive and idiotic. And if there is one reason I have not bought a Dell computer for my kids this year, it's Steven.)
But Dell is not alone in its squeamishness. A media buyer for a company whose clients include Volkswagen, Fidelity and McDonald's told the Journal: "I don't think you will see any of our clients advertising during the special 9/11 coverage on the TV networks." Here you have companies--some of them pillars of the economy--saying, in effect, that there is something inherently vulgar about commerce, perhaps even sacrilegious.
After all, with the time on their hands--as well as with the advance programming notice they're getting from the networks--these companies should be able to put together commercials that are not tone deaf. I can see the point of yanking the benighted "Steven" from Sept. 11's viewing, but is it beyond Dell's capacity to create a "spot" that is in harmony with the day's temper?
And can't McDonald's, which vaunts itself as being the epitome of a certain sort of America, attempt to rise to the occasion--instead of shrinking from it?
Perhaps. But will it do so? I fear the obstacle here is not so much an inability to be creative as it is fear--paradoxical in such giants of moneymaking--that a flash of commerce will somehow sully the day, and soil the companies' reputations. The irony of this reticence (and this apprehensiveness) is all the greater for the fact that the national disposition--a year after the numbing catastrophe of 9/11--is positive and resilient.
There is a fiercer yearning for reconstruction than there is for contemplation. In the debate over what will be built on Ground Zero, for example, there is a growing consensus that, while something of commemorative elegance must be laid down, the thrust of the rebuilding must be utilitarian.
This point, in its essence, is not unconnected to commercials on TV on Sept. 11.
Some comparisons are being made with the suspension of advertising on Sept. 11 last year, and for the four days that followed. One understood the suspension at the time, and one can still see the point of it. It was of a piece with the mood of the moment, and the rapid rearrangement of priorities that followed the first taste of shock.
By contrast, a wholesale evacuation from TV's commercial space on Sept. 11 this year would be purely, and hollowly, symbolic--and even self-indulgent. Whatever the explanation being put out by the companies in question, the reason they will not air their "spots" on the day is not reverence for the occasion, but a fear that ads would harm their commercial prospects.
In this, they not only fail themselves, but they underestimate the American viewers.
Our society values commerce, and understands the burdens under which businesses must now operate. Naturally, viewers would be offended by ads that strike the wrong note on Sept. 11. But why should they be anything other than appreciative of commercials that take on the creative challenge of the day?
Tasteful advertising may not be the norm--which should explain, in part, the advertisers' unwillingness to tackle Sept. 11. But can anyone give me a reason why viewers, if presented with something respectfully done, should be turned off by it? Are they not more likely to be reassured--and to be put in a mood to reward those companies that made the effort?
Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor and chief television and media critic of The Wall Street Journal.
