We know what you need
by Matt Worley

On my off time, I watch commercials. Not that I'm thinking about buying anything (it has often been remarked around my living room that no one is trying to sell me stuff, it's for everyone else), but I'm just curious about how everyone else's mind works. There are many amazing commercials out there that I have no real interest in buying the products.
I think the Levi's Wide Leg Jeans commercials are the best representation of this (yes, I have some Levi's, but I buy them second-hand--depriving the mother company of my hard-earned pesos). Not the stupid one with kids talking pseudo-philosophy and sticking their faces in the camera. No, I'm talking about the elevator fantasy one.
Some scruffy looking guy is in the elevator and is joined by an amazing beauty with a bare mid-drift (I swear that this is the same model used in an earlier Levi's commercial--the one where the young woman gets all of the quarters from the change machine to meet a guy--only with different hair). They hedge for a few seconds, trying not to look in each other's eyes (because direct eye contact is how other people steal your soul) and then the pupils meet. The music changes, some Monkee's song comes on strong "Hey, I think I love you!" and the couple goes through courtship, wedding, honeymoon and childbirth in fifteen seconds (or a little longer for the 60 second version). At the end Levi's presents its catch phrase for Wide Leg Jeans (a concept I'm not too familiar with--are they baggy, or just made for people who ride horses?): "It's Wide Open."
Now, if you think about it hard, this might be a good slogan. It means that you have an infinite number of choices, and you don't have to settle for that scruffy looking guy in the elevator. But for the first fifteen times watching the commercial, all I could think of was, "Her legs are wide open?" And maybe, underneath all of the politically correctness, that is what Levi's is trying to say. Wide Leg Jeans are for people who get laid.
The Wide Leg Jean commercial is not a Christmas commercial, I am sure we'll be seeing that puppy off and on throughout the next six months or so. Christmas commercials are actually even more underhanded. They know you're going to be spending money, so they appeal to other parts of your brain. All credit card commercials tout their (very small) percentage of each purchase that is donated to various charities. You're going to use the credit card anyway, so this way you can feel good about it (even though the donation is made in the name of the credit card company, giving them the tax breaks which will save them more money than they lose by actually giving money away).
Kodak is using the same approach our parents used to ensure good behavior while all of the relatives were around during the holidays. They show the current poster boy for "badness," Dennis Rodman, doing good deeds and changing his image so he can get a new camera for Christmas. Somehow I think the money Dennis gets for the commercials will cover the cost of any number of cameras he might want to get. I assume the reason you have to be so good to get the new camera is the price of the item, as well as film, processing and other incidentals.
The more I think about the whole Christmas season, I wonder why this can't happen in smaller doses all year round. If the credit card companies really cared about all of these charities, why don't they give away a percentage of their year round earnings, rather than just from the day after Thanksgiving to the day before Christmas? If I feel like giving someone a gift (say we see something they might want or need and we can afford it), why can't I just buy it and hand it over? And if I'm really attracted to that young woman in the Levi's commercial, does it matter if she's wide open?

Matt Worley didn't buy any gifts that were widely advertised on TV for anyone on his gift list.

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