Christmas Carol Abuse

Most of us would rather do without TV commercials entirely (and we Tivo them often enough to prove it). It’s not so bad if the commercials are inventive, funny or truly informative – provided they don’t treat us like idiots.

Y’know that Christmas in July thing..that dandy marketing ploy someone made up just to create a reason to have a sale? Well, it’s not even July and already they are bludgeoning us with Christmas music. Have you seen it? The Verizon commercial that uses the song “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with the lyrics changed to “We Wish You a Merry Sale Day” or some such drivel. Verizon’s marketing team actually thought we’d be happy to see “Verizon carolers” show up at some poor dudes door to announce a sale on cell phones. I was really turned off by that commercial and considered writing to their marketing team just to say, “If all you can do is rely on Christmas carols in June, you better get a new marketing team. How unoriginal, not to mention annoying .”

Christmas carols get so chewed up from October to January. (yes, I have seen Christmas commercials with Christmas songs start as early as right after Halloween). What was once charming and heartwarming is often now trite and cold. Marketers over commercialized “Red-and-Green” to the point that it’s more like “Black-and-Blue”. I don’t know how my non Christian friends stand it when the frenzy of the holidays sets in.

I think there should be a moratorium on using Christmas songs at any other time of year. Maybe we should get a petition going that would be sent to all the big ad agencies.

OK, I know, I know. We all have better things to do.

But that darned commercial made me cranky. Or should I say, the uninventive marketing team over at Verizon made me cranky.

Just a thought I caught flying by, what do you think?

~ by veritas07 on June 12, 2008.