Posts Tagged “Lincoln”

I’m a huge Bob Newart fan. Loved his TV shows. Love his stand-up comedy. In fact, I was lucky enough to play his show, years ago, in Shreveport. Not that he needed a band, but I was part of the house band at the old Le Bossiér Celebrity Dinner Theatre across the river in Bossier City, and we opened and closed his act, playing the theme from The Bob Newhart Show. One of his big bits in his stand-up act involves acting out one end of a phone conversation, where the audience infers and implies the other side of the conversation via their imaginations. One of Bob’s most famous bits is called Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue, where he imagines what it might have been like if Lincoln had the services of both the telephone and a modern advertising agency. The results were both absurd and hilarious. It was simultaneously funny, yet oddly respectful of one of our most beloved Presidents.

That brings us to the latest offering from the folks at Mountain Dew. Dew’s ads have long been edgy and almost too hip for the room – their Super Bowl riff on the Bohemian Rhapsody is a classic. Their latest ad features a send-up of the Lincoln-Douglass debates – a pivital moment in American History. In the Dew version, Lincoln (who was in reality a fan of Greco-Roman wrestling – NOT the stuff that passes for “wrestling” on WWE), strips to the waste and proceeds to go Medieval, waging Civil War on Douglass and others on the dias.

Color me unimpressed.

I just don’t see the humor, past the shock value of seeing an American icon strip to the waist and sport an American eagle tattoo. Newhart’s comedy was funny. This spot? Flat. Which is not a good thing for a soda ad to be.

Hopefully, the Dew ad pulls well with the 15 to 24 crowd, which I suspect is their target market. (I’m not a Mountain Dew fan – never have been, and likely never will be.) If, on the other hand, they want to reach a wider demographic, they might want to look at creating ads with a humor level somewhere above that of Jackass The Movie.