The Super Bowl is about football. . . mostly. . . and millions will be watching on Sunday with great anticipation focusing not only on the game, but on showcased ads. Heinz is best known for making “America’s Favorite Ketchup”. . . and millions douse the red stuff all over their french fries every day. Pornhub is the largest pornography site on the Internet. . . with over 100 million visitors per day. Combine all three of these things and you’ve got a story that should leave you shaking your head and getting verbally proactive with the kids you know and love.
A headline in Monday’s Wall Street Journal reports that “Kraft Heinz’s Devour Advertises on Pornhub as Part of Super Bowl Campaign.” The headline’s sub-title reads, “Brand safety takes a back seat to making the most of a big-game buy.” It seems that the Heinz Co’s Devour frozen-food line created a Super Bowl ad based on the idea of “food porn.” (I’ve embedded the ad below). Last Monday, they placed the ad on the home page of the Pornhub site, where the site’s 100 million daily viewers were created with the ad. Meant to be humorous(it’s been commented on by a host of online viewers of the previewed commercials as LOL hilarious and funny), the ad employs innuendo and suggestiveness regarding what has become the exploitive and destructive scourge of epidemic pornography among young and old alike in our culture. The ad was deemed over the line by CBS and Heinz will air a shortened and edited version during the big game.
Perhaps that’s the biggest news coming out of the pre-Super-Bowl-ad-mania-and-expectations that have existed for many years and have now become bigger than the game itself. And the fact that the commercials are such a big deal is good reason for youth workers and parents to seize the teachable moment to train kids to filter all of the 4,000 to 10,000 marketing messages they see each day – including the Heinz and all other Super Bowl ads – through a biblical world and life view. In other words, why not take the opportunity to move kids from a posture of mindless consumption to one of mindful critique? You see, the greatest power of marketing is not so much to sell product, but to sell a way of looking at and living life to impressionable and vulnerable kids who are seeking to answer questions like Who am I? and What do I believe? Yes, marketing has power. Unbelievable power.
To make this easy for you, let me suggest two helpful resources. . .
First, we’ve once again put together a free, downloadable handout that you can use during Sunday’s Super Bowl commercials to teach your kids how to think critically and Christianly about the ads they see by running them through what we call “The Simple 7 Ad Filtering Questions.” Here’s a link to the download that youth workers have used and found so helpful over the past few years. Give it a look. . . . and please use it! It’s there for you.
Second, we’ve released a resource that youth workers can use with parents to equip parents to understand the power of advertising, the methods marketers use to reach and influence kids, and some of the response strategies parents can use to nurture their kids into engaging with advertising in ways that glorify God. Our ready-to-use plug-and-play Just Add Parents parent meeting on Raising Marketing-Savvy Kids serves to help parents parent so much more effectively in today’s ad-saturated world. You can learn more about this Just Add Parents: Raising Marketing-Savvy Kids parent meeting resource here.
I am concerned of the youth of the Church this time. So I need resources like this. So please would you mind sending such a materials frequently, please?
Is there anything we can do to convince companies not to advertise on porn site?
Is there anything we can do to tear down giants like pornhub?