If you’re watching the Super Bowl, you saw this utter shitcake of a commercial from Teleflora mocking women who read romance novels.
Ok, Teleflora. Eat a dick. You need flowers? Let me tell you: I’ve never had anything but wonderful results from ProFlowers.com. Click the radio icon in the corner and you can often get a free vase. The flowers have lasted a long ass time, and to my knowledge, ProFlowers has never mocked my love of romance novels.
ETA 2/3/09: Folks who complained via email to Teleflora are receiving apologetic email with a $15 coupon good toward a future purchase. Looks like complaining yields some results.
Point of interest, the Time Super Bowl Ad commentator gave the Teleflora ad a C+, but the Danica ad an F. The guy giving the grades, is a … guy.
Yep. The plainish cubicle slave gets flowers at work (we assume from her boyfriend), but he didn’t send a cheap, crappy vase, which makes him a loser. Cubicle slave, you are ugly, boring, and stupid, and your boyfriend is lame. This message brought to you at great expense from Teleflora.
Golly, who could possibly be offended by that?
Women, you should evaluate and judge every little gift you get from your fella, just to make sure it measures up, because a thoughtful gesture is meaningless unless it’s expensive (assuming that flowers in mere boxes are inexpensive, sheesh). Men, go big or go home. Women will only like you if you spend lots of money on them, you stupid and cheap losers.
Are there any potential customers they DIDN’T insult?
Wow, wasn’t that a steaming pile of misogynistic suck.
I’m not sure the whole meaning of the ad was grasped here.
The flowers in the box where the jerks being dickheads, the ones making fun of the poor women, her novels, her cats. The point was that the flowers were jerks, saying and doing things that jerks say and do. The FLOWERS, not the ad. The ad was implying that their comepetitor’s product was of bad quality, which I think came across loud and clear.
The actress was clearly a lovely looking woman, so the tone of the ad wasn’t so much mocking as sharply funny. The message: send quality.
I didn’t think the ad was great in terms of clearly presenting their own product, but it was pretty funny. Especially the nerd at the end who tries to make everything better: “I’d like to see you naked…”
You could, in fact, read the ad as saying that people (or flora) who make fun of women who read romance novels are big asshats.
And to follow up: BUY LOCAL, people, especially in this economy. Yes, if you are sending far away, local florists will undoubtedly use a larger company to ship—but still, go to them first so they get the bigger percentage of the cash.
And to sum up: The ad was not trying to imply that the woman was pathetic, or that the guy sending her flowers was pathetic. It was trying to imply that the FLOWERS the guy sent were pathetic, and didn’t properly (or at all) convey the message he was trying to send to his lovely lady friend. No one but a bit of dying plant matter was implying the woman was ugly, read stupid books, or was worthless. Someone was actually trying to send her flowers to be nice, and because they chose a bad product, it failed.
And quite obviously the commercial failed if it took me that many words to explain it!
I think most on here are aware of the message they were “trying” to get across. I won’t speak for others, but I at least found the way they chose to do it rude.
How about (since the flowers already have human-line properties and can talk), the flowers gasp for air because they can’t “breathe” in the box and come out wilted and gross-looking? Wouldn’t that have conveyed the same kind of message without using cliche’ed insults that a lot of their clientele would maybe find offensive?
Ahem. I’m a florist by day. The TF rep came by our store the day before to tell us to watch for the ad. I said, “What’s it going to be about?” and he replied, “Boxes of flowers.”
🙁
My advice to everyone? CALL YOUR LOCAL FLORIST. When you go through TF, FTD, 1800flowers, justflowers…they’re just order handlers, they take a cut of your money before they send it to a local florist for you. So you if you spend fifty dollars, they might only send $45 to the florist. Then, they take another percentage cut out of that $45 so the florist knows they aren’t getting all of that money. In the end, for the florist, wire orders are more of a marketing op than a money making thing. I make them nice because we stick our card on them and hope the recipient will call us at some later date directly. But a lot of florists will look at the wire order for $45 and a phoned in order for $45…which one do you think they’ll take more time with and fill to true value? Especially on a crazy day like Valentines? It’s not fair, but there you go.
Plus, please, let’s give the mom and pops some help here :). We’re DYING.
Having worked at a large ad/public relations agency, I get what the ad was “trying” to say. But one thing I learned is that the whole “this is why the other guys are asshats and we’re better” apporoach in advertising backfires about 50% of the time. Often the audience remembers and connects the asshat behavior with your company’s name because you aren’t pointing out the competitior’s name. Not good.
So overall, this ad fails miserably to achieve its objective—which would be for people to call Teleflora for their flowers.
I agree completely with Alisha (because I worked at my m-i-l florist shop before she became my m-i-l), order from your local florist rather than an online or 1-800 service. They’ll do a better job and they need the support!
The Superbowl ads in general either bored or bothered me this year. The Superbowl is sports, yes, but it’s also a family event, with lots of kids milling around the TV when its on, and some of those commercials were just…no. Yes, we could screen the entire Superbowl and its commercials before allowing our children to watch, but jeez! Who wants to watch that crap 2x? *laugh*
I guess it’s just what’s accepted now. Commercials are often violent and disturbing these days, especially ones for other tv programs or movies. They freak my kids out when we watch anything live and can’t fast forward through the ads. Like, I dunno, the Superbowl.
Karen said:
And I think the ad is going to backfire, big-time. How many millions of Superbowl-watching women do you think watched this commercial yesterday, then said to their SO, “Don’t you EVER buy flowers from this company. EVER.”
Theresa reinforces my original thoughts—the intended message is a valid advertising tactic, but the execution in this case fails on entirely too many levels. Good comparison advertising is specific, focuses on the positive, and spends most of its time on your product. The Teleflora ad is vague, focuses on the negative, and doesn’t even mention Teleflora until far too late in the commercial.
Quizno’s did a good run of comparison spots a year or so back (“our sandwiches have more meat than Subway’s”); they named the target, picked a specific feature, and did a good job of building their own brand up. Burger King’s ads often do a good job with a more general comparison, when they emphasize that their burgers are flame-broiled whereas everybody else’s are fried. And it’s been amusing over the last couple of months watching Progresso and Campbell’s run strong comparison ad campaigns specifically targeting each other’s soups—they’re both doing a good job of homing in on specific points and building on their strengths. By contrast, the Teleflora ad is a textbook example of how to do a comparison promotion wrong.
Foul, foul advertisement. It doesn’t work at all, for any reason, no matter how you look at it.
The flowers are ‘yelling’ at the lady who received them. Doesn’t the fact that she is getting flowers negate all the comments that the flowers are yelling at her? Someone obviously loves her enough to send the flowers, so all of the comments make no sense.
Plus, no matter how you look at it, the commercial was just rude. Rude does not IMO sell anything.
Very good advice about calling your local florist instead of the online service. Or better yet walk into the store! Gotcha!
The ad was mean and stupid. My husband dosent send flowers I have a whole yard full or I buy them myself. I agree with the above poster that they are kind of an oldlady gift. Flowers delivered are great for someone across the country. But you can always look up a florist in their town, and call them.
After that commercial I too had the thought, That big explosion was Sarah’s head blowing up. My husband turned to me and said (after I had my own little rant about the commercial) “So, I buy from them I’m dead, right?”
Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m just not as insulted as I guess I should be. I admit it – I laughed at the ad because I found the idea of flowers – asshole flowers – spewing snark to be rather funny.
I do agree that the way they went about promoting their message – if you don’t order from us, you run the risk of sending the wrong message – was maybe a little misdirected and not well-thought out as far as broad reactions go. I was insulted by the romance readers=lame slam, but hey, they aren’t the first to pull of such lazy crap. I just never got the idea that they intended to insult women, and for me, intention does mean something when it comes to giving an asshat move like this one a pass.
But, like I said in my blog post today, I think we all are doing more of a disservice to our outrage by expressing it. We’re giving this ad weight by making it A Thing. More people will see it, more people will remember it, and that’s the uber-goal of all advertising – brand recognition. This might be a case that letting it fade darkly into the annals of past Super Bowl ads might be the best course.
I get what they were trying to say…but they could have picked a better way to say it. I was watching it with my mom and we both were like wtf? Saying that getting boxed flowers implies that you are somehow unworthy of vase flowers is recidulous. Boxed or in a vase most people don’t give a shit, they are just excited that someone thought enough of them to send flowers in the first place. And the way that they said it was just rude and offensive, not funny in the least. In 30 seconds they call her ugly, a trainwreck, and then top it off with a nobody wants to see you naked. Great message all right, would love to meet the “genius” behind this load of crap.
I don’t normally get upset about this type of thing and I’ve never consciously boycotted a company for whatever reason, but this ad hit me totally wrong.
I think the ad also failed because of a lack of recognition of the company advertising and a lack of relating to the supposed downfall of the other company. When you see the Pepsi vs. Coke or one of the many beer ads you know all the players and their “fix” of the perceived problem…better taste, less filling, etc. I didn’t know who teleflora was and I’ve never had any issues with boxed flowers, so that part of the ad didn’t catch my attention. The flowers spewing insults did and then I saw the name of the company. Until I watched it again on this site I didn’t event remember the part of the commercial where the guy came to the door with the vase of flowers. The wrong parts of the ad stuck with me and, judging by this site, I’m not the only one.
I know I’m probably not the target demographic they were going for with this ad, especially since I apparently didn’t know about the huge quality control problems people were having with boxed flowers :), but it seems like if you are going to spend millions of $$ on a superbowl ad you might want to run it by a few people outside of your industry before ok’ing it.
Snort!
Maybe we should gather together and purchase a Teleflora delivery for someone high up in the company.
Card reading something like: Thanks so much for your offensive commercial. This is the last you’ll ever see of our money. Signed, The large demographic you pissed off.
tag word: thought69
That’s called stereotyping and is offensive.
I have cats (and rabbits and a dog and fish), I read the occassional romance type novel. And guess what? I’m married and have been, happily for nearly 15 years.
Not every cat owner /romance novel reader is a spinster.
I was just showing some of the better commercials to a friend on Hulu, and Teleflora was one of the sponsors. Their message, running across the screen of one of the Bud horse commercials – “Make her Thorny” for Valentine’s Day.
Excuse me while I go pound my head for awhile.
I’d just finished posting a blog asking that everybody boycott the asshats and then I popped over here. LOL. I lurve this place.
Well, God knows, I’m no one’s idea of a prude, but the big issue I really would have had with the Go Daddy commercials is one that I didn’t actually have to deal with this year and that’s the fact that I often watch sporting events with my kids (a boy, 12 and a girl 11). A lot of times they watch sports with the Hub and me, but this year, they were playing videogames and only coming in for the occasional update. Anyhow, they’re bright kids and I find myself having some really interesting conversations with them and I know, had they been watching with me, that commercial in particular would have sparked some interesting discussion with my son. Starting with, “No, babe, it’s not a good idea ever to even pretend to manipulate a woman for your own pleasure.”
I mean, I don’t let him play excessively violent/sexist videogames or watch movies with that sort of tone to them, but when it’s a commercial during one of the biggest sporting events of the year?
Just when we’d gotten used to the multitude of Cialis commercials.
Well I went to the teleflora website and gave them my negative opinion under feedback. I think if a few more would pop over to do so maybe they get the message and a better spot next year.
I disagree. If you don’t tell somebody their error, they don’t know that they need to fix it. In this case, the brand is becoming associated with negative recognition.
If you don’t express your outrage, how can the people who offended you know that they offended you, and that they need to change their behaviour if they want to associate with you.
Granted, they may choose not to respond, but no good has EVER come of just eating your outrage. That kind of shit gives you bowel cancer.
If a business offends you, you need to not only boycott them, but TELL them you’re boycotting them, and tell them why.
Disgusting on so many levels. Will make sure to change our corporate vendor from Teleflora to Proflowers.com. An easy enough change to make! (we may not be a big company, but I’d rather not even send a thousand dollars their way!)
It actually didn’t go any farther on the complete commercial- but they did get even!
I always use a local florist, even for long distance deliveries. They do such a great job and I want to keep my dollars here at home as much as I can!
Everything about this commercial irritates me. My cat hates it too! 🙂
Hate to butt in again, but we were talking about this in the shop today…and one of the designers was saying how she was getting all mad until she realized it was a teleflora ad. Then she was just confused. She thought some jeweler or something was poking fun at giving flowers in general for Valentine’s Day :). Curse you, jewelers!
SO glad to see so many are going local. If you boycott TF, go local! Most of us are on the web. It’s as easy as clicking on proflowers (proflowers = our goliath 🙁 ). You’ll pay the same price, oftentimes less, and there are REAL people on the other end of the phone.
Stupid, insulting commercial. Insulting to women *and* men, IMO. Not even coherent in its message and offensive to boot. You’d think given the economy that they would have access to better copywriters. Or was everyone just too depressed to come up with something good. Maybe they got it on sale.
As for the pervasive themes of violence (and its trajectories) in this year’s ads, beyond the outdated stereotypes they seem to be working off of re. the Superbowl’s audience, I wondered if it was tapping into/mirroring/articulating/letting off some steam from the undercurrent of aggression in society over the war, the economic downturn, and the overall sense of frustration people have been feeling about how things are going.
I completely agree, but I find the spinster issue even more offensive. As if being single is something to be ashamed of. What is this, 1809? Women have their own worth outside of their marriage status.
Ad = EPIC FAIL on all levels
What about the overweight woman who ” never gets flowers” totally unworthy of love in the eyes of the brilliant advertisers.
Bah!
They offended gals who “never” get flowers. Which was a stupid move. Like a lot of women I GIVE flowers a lot more often than I recieve them . Women usually order for family or church groups, I also was the one who ordered for the jobs I worked at back in the day. Men don’t order flowers as much as you’d think. They tell their assistants or secretaries to see that it’s done.
tsk tsk Teleflora.
The ad seemed to me to be saying, “sending cheap flowers sends the wrong message,” played out by the flowers saying “bad” things instead what you’d want to say to a nice girl. It is “bad” to tell her that no one wants to see her naked (bad to imply that she’s unattractive). It is also “bad” to accuse her of reading romance novels or having a cat, because those are unattractive qualities in a woman, and sending flowers that tell her that is a bad move.
See, flowers that described me as reading romance and having a cat would be speaking the truth, not being ugly and nasty. So from now on, when I’m ordering flowers for family or friends long distance, I will be sure these asshats are not involved.
This seems to go right along with the rest of the commercials that make people feel worthless, useless, and over blow sexuality to an unattainable point.
Par for the course for Super Bowl.
But hey… at least there was hardcore porn on some stations during the game! Quality programing right?
I spent my evening reading… *dork hat firmly on*
I’m going to have to add my voice to those who are not really outraged by this commercial.
Since the whole point of the commercial was that sending crappy flowers will tell the recipient that the sender doesn’t think much of them, the whole thing worked. The cats and romance novels part was intended to read as an ignorant insult. As said before by others, the cats and romance novels part isn’t a legitimate insult or disparagement.
The ad was loud and kinda scary, but it wasn’t misogynistic, I don’t think. It was just poorly thought out, since this is a seconds-long ad and nobody will be pondering the convoluted message. They’ll just get mad.
These reactions seem kind of knee-jerk, to me. I dunno.
Strike this part of what I wrote just above. If other people are “knee-jerk,” then I am definitely condescending.
Fuck ‘em. Proflowers is my FRIEND!!!! (And my husband’s very very best buddy, believe you me!)
I caught the end of the commercial. Now I know why you were so mad on twitter. That is offensive! And I own a cat too!
You peeps might enjoy this.
Advertising Age is the trade journal of choice for the Advertising industry. The link goes to their review of the Super Bowl commercials. The entire video is 7:30, but they cover Teleflora in the first 90 seconds.
http://adage.com/brightcove/single.php?title=9809054001
Yeeeeeeahhhhh…
The people who weren’t as outraged by this might think that the ignorant romance novels and cats part was on purpose and perfectly OK, but that was stereotyping and it worked.
Click on the youtube link and go to the comments. Someone said that the ad was poorly played out, and someone else replied and told her to go home to her cats and read some romance novels, which just proved the first person’s point.
So yeah, stereotypes catch on. And people are repeating quotes from the commercial like it’s so funny watching someone get trashed.
Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield gave Teleflora zero stars in his Super Bowl review. “In-House” refers to Teleflora’s own advertising department, as opposed to an outside agency being responsible for this dreck.
The entire article, with ratings for all the ads, is here:
http://adage.com/superbowl09/article?article_id=134248
I just wrote about this at my blog, too.
Hey, Teleflora, here’s an angle you didn’t even think of: Fifteen million women in the US between 25 and 49 are “avid” NFL fans. I wonder how many of THEM also like to read romance novels, huh?
I’m betting the number’s high…
-S
romance writing, romance reading, cat owning, NFL fan non-Teleflora shopper