In my email this morning was an ad targeting parents of children much younger than my college and high school kids. Take a look:
This is an out-of-touch marketer. If the goal to strive for alteration and invoke another E name overrides common sense marketing and being topical, then I guess they hit their goal. But Eminem as the bogeyman? Go ahead, click the image and make it big so you can see it.
I don’t want that kid listening to Em except maybe a clean version of Mockingbird. But I’m not so sure I want her listening to Elmo either. There’s a middle ground, and my hackles raise up when I see music being used to scare parents. Look, this happened with blues, with jazz, with doo-wop, with pop and Lord knows, it happened with rock.
But isn’t it time to say, “I don’t need that little cutie to be a real emo kid and start cutting herself, but you’re not going to scare my family. She’s listening to Louis Armstrong, early Bach and a mix of the more melodic McCartney tunes. She’s quite fine, thank you.” For her seventh birthday, we’re buying her the new Common release.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but this ad ticks me off.
