Has anybody else seen Verizon's new cell phone commercial featuring a
ferret?  The commercial begins with a typical slacker dude sitting on
a couch having a staring contest with a ferret that is standing on a
coffeetable in front of him.  When the shots are from a distance, it's
a real ferret but when they are close up, it's some sort of puppet that
scowls at the man.  The man sticks his tongue out at the ferret which
then launches itself from the coffeetable and latches on to the man's
tongue.  The ferret at this point is making those bizarre chittering
noises that everybody in Hollywood seems to think ferrets make.  The
man runs around his house and out of the house trying to pull off the
ferret as the Verizon salesman walks by.  The point of the ad I guess
is supposed to be that if the man had a text messaging Verizon phone he
would have been able to get help but since there was a ferret clamped to
his tongue he couldn't use a regular phone.  Sometimes the ferret is real
in these shots, and the tongue is pretty clearly fake.
 
I know that many people might see this as funny, but to me, it undoes a
lot of the good PR that ferrets have achieved in recent years and
reinforces an image of them as psychotic maulers.  It also disturbs me
that Verizon thinks consumers will find this situation funny--to me, the
situation calls to mind abusive pet owners and traumatized pets.  So, I
plan to write Verizon to tell them this, and explain that with this kind
of advertising, Verizon sends me straight to its competitors.  Verizon's
main corporate address is Verizon Communications, 1095 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, New York 10036, should anybody else care to write
them.
 
Sigh.
 
Regina
 
Regina Harrison  [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
http://www.channel1.com/users/regina/
blog: http://www.channel1.com/users/regina/zblog.html
 
Is that my business?  Well, what is my business?  Do I know?  Did I ever
know?  Let s not go into that.  You re not human tonight, Marlowe.  Maybe
I never was or ever will be... Maybe we all get like this in the cold
half-lit world where always the wrong thing happens and never the right.
--Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
[Posted in FML issue 3867]