[mbillie1]

So I'm watching the neverending story (tonight's Mets game) and I see this coppertone spray-on sunblock commercial. The main character or whatever is like, a early to mid thirties white guy playing pickup basketball in a city environment. There's also an old spice commercial where some similarly mid-thirties (or older) white guy is holding a basketball, apparently demonstrating his manliness or the manliness of the product, or something.

But here's my issue. These mid-thirties white guys playing pickup basketball with a perfectly racially mixed group of guys... they don't exist, or certainly not in the numbers necessary to justify using them as a marketing technique. Like who are they fooling here? I am a early/mid twenties white guy. I know this advertising is absurd. Is this targeted at insecure white guys wanting to feel cool by playing what's generally considered a more "urban" sport? Is there some strange town somewhere filled with energetic, in-shape, mid-thirties and older white guys playing street ball with their friends (and wearing sunscreen, wtf? so unballa/ungangsta) ??

I watch these commercials and I'm never buying this product. Unlike most people who are moderately affected by advertising, I am severely affected by advertising. This product obviously declares itself intended for some strange, fictional consumer group (the b-ballin white guys ten years older than me, lol!) so I will not use it. But like... I can see how the ultra-sexualized commercials for body spray / whatever can work, because they're at least associating their product directly with a good thing. Are there sappy middle aged dudes who think if they wear this brand of spray-on sunscreen that it will assist in their hip, athletic life? Like how is this commercial anything but a monumental failure (other than the fact that I am so bored/irritated by it that I'm posting this obv)?

What are some other made-up or absurd targets/examples/etc used in commercials? Obviously the "insanely aroused, unbelievably hot chick turned on by your spray-on deodorant" is out there, but that's a bit obvious and those commercials are clearly tongue-in-cheek to some degree.

And any mid-thirties, still cool and hip b-ballin white guys who throw down on the street court, feel free to chime in and disprove the central hypothesis in this post.