Another disingenuous dancing alert

In the spirit of summer reruns, I’d like to reprise one of my pet peeves for a moment. Among all the contrived, non-credible behaviors we see portrayed in advertising, I find the “breaking out into dance because I’m so pleased with such and such a product” thing to be among the most reprehensible.

Because dancing can be so wonderfully expressive and joyful when it’s genuine, it’s that much more repugnant when the dancing is false.

There is a lot of behavior in advertising that would never take place in real life. This if fine, as long as the ad makes it clear that the advertiser is taking license—that there is a clear, mutual understanding that they aren’t pretending to replicate real life.

It is the advertising that attempts to represent some semblence of real life behavior that usually fails miserably. Generally, what we experience is simply the advertiser’s wishful thinking about how reality goes. “If only people, upon discovering my wonderful product, would really beam, or eagerly tell others, or be inspired to break out into a celebratory dance. Maybe if I portray this scenario in my advertising, it will somehow make it so in reality . . .”

What compels me to return to this topic again and again is that it keeps happening. We, the creative community, seem incapable of learning this lesson.

I am hearby issuing citations to three advertisers and their ad agencies for recent crimes against dancing credibility:

Aleve

Jello

(Though this, I concede, is a grey area, because sometimes the wiggly dancing represents the fun nature of the product, but in recent executions, the dancing seems to cross the line into characterizing the reactions of presumably real people)

Yo Plus

During the decade or so of diatribes against disingenuous dancing that I’ve produced, I must have cited at least a score of examples, starting, if I recall, with the notorious Senekot commercials in which old people who’ve returned to regularity dance with joy to a wincingly diluted arrangement of the James Brown tune “I Feel Good.”

There has been no letup recently. In fact, if anything, the frequency with which creatively bankrupt advertisers and their agencies have been resorting to this desperate, empty device, has been increasing.

Please, I implore you, whoever you are, desist with the disingenuous dancing.