Mars and Venus

Maybe my Tivo is to blame.

Or Mad Men.

I never watch commercials anymore. So imagine my shock on Sunday during the Super Bowl when I discovered that the advertising creative community had sunk to that of its lowest member.

And no, I am not talking about the Tim Tebow commercial, I will spare you that diatribe - I will say that the ad's premise would have resonated better with me had it just been any average mom with an average kid. Anyhoo.

I am referring to the tired and overplayed themes of "please, take my wife", philandering, wives emasculating men, etc. predominating this year's Super Bowl commercials. According to Shannon O'Toole, author of Wedded to the Game, women make up 43% of the NFL fan base. This number may not be exact but most polls have shown that over the past 15 years the percentage of female football fans has increased.

Seriously, we still think plain girl versus pretty girl is enticing to any consumer?

It does make me wonder who the heck was in the room when some yahoo sold the humor in the concept about a woman stealing her husband's spine so he would shop with her. Yeah. Give me a minute to stop laughing. Me and the other women who make up 46.5% of the US workforce.

Once I stop laughing, I would like to point out that the unemployment rate in January for women was 8.6% and 11.2% for men.

I shudder to use the following phrase for the 3 zillionth time -- but in this economy, you would think advertisers would shy away from alienating any consumers. You would also imagine that advertisers' research and development departments would do a little detective work to come up with informative nuggets such as:

That 75% of the employed women hold full-time employment. That means women drive a lot of the consumer market. They buy for themselves, their significant others, their children, and their friends.

Women earn 73 cents for every dollar a man makes yet women make 85% of consumer purchases.

This means that there is...was...a possibility that a woman watching the Super Bowl would engage with Teleflora, E*Trade, Bridgestone, or FloTV. Yep, I am calling you out just in case anyone forgot who spent millions of dollars on advertising to insult the majority of potential consumers.

So, Bridgestone et al., take a long hard look at these numbers and try again - the Super Bowl comes around again next year and I hear the economic recovery could take awhile.