PetSmart has taken holiday advertising to new heights. This commercial caught my attention last night while I was watching TV. Entitled “Sneaky”, it starts off like any other holiday commercial: dopey white suburban male returns home to his perfectly decorated house with presents in hand. He’s obviously been out buying gifts for the family, trying to win their affection by spoiling them with exactly what they want. He gingerly tip-toes past the family pooch presumably because if startled, Fido might bark and wake the family ruining the whole Christmas surprise.
Worst case scenario goes like this: Kids find out that Dad bought the Transformers Match Box Grand Canyon El Diablo’s Pass race track (batteries not included) instead of Santa and their little psyches are crushed under the enormous weight of the holiday’s worst kept and weirdest secret, so creeping into the house undetected is pretty much the most important task suburban male, we’ll call him Gary, will ever do.
Gary finally reaches the safety of the upstairs bedroom and is about to close the door- but wait! Fido is there and Gary is busted because all along he’s been shopping for the dog and not his family! Darn, that Fido is good.
OK, maybe Gary just lives alone and Fido’s all he’s got, but as the commercial spits the holiday tag line “This holiday season give your pets the gifts they can’t wait to open”, it’s clear the corporation is tapping a whole new level of holiday materialism; Now, we need to buy our pets presents in addition to buying a present for every human we know because pets are people too, right?
Gary tries to get flirty with an attractive member of PetSmart’s staff who is obviously into dorky bald guys that buy gifts for their pets.
Cut to the scene of Gary, who suffers from male-pattern baldness, painstakingly picking out Fido’s gifts (that’s right- Fido got a whole bag of gifts) with the cute young PetSmart sales associate. “Hmmm, no this one does squeak right… wait that’s it, yes! This is the perfect squeaky banana for Fido!”
Who can blame PetSmart? I don’t blame them, in fact I commend them. Pure genius- equate their store with the tradition of the holidays and all of the sudden people need to buy gifts for their pets on Valentine’s Day too. If people are willing to treat their pets better than they treat their families and friends, then why not tap that well until it runs dry?
Dude thats funny.
Comment by b — December 10, 2007 @ 10:23 am