Father appeal is being used to sell everything from cookies to cologne to household cleaning products. “We’re redefining success,” says Mal MacDougall, chairman of The MacDougall Co., a New York advertising agency. “The ultimate hero of the ’90s will be the best dad. The Yuppie, the macho man are all dead.” MacDougall’s agency created a print ad for Quorum cologne that shows a pin-striped Yuppie carrying a baby instead of a briefcase, under the headline “Success is knowing which appointments to keep.” Ad agency FCB Leber Katz Partners created a TV spot that features Dad instructing Junior on the art of opening an Oreo cookie. The Gap has a series of ads picturing famous fathers and their kids that plug their GapKids line. LeKair hair products put bald Harlem Globetrotter Curly in an ad with his daughter. And an ad for Brite floor wax even shows a father polishing the kitchen floor.
What has become of the Marlboro Man? You can still see macho images in some beer and car ads but, for the most part, time and the women’s movement have passed the tough guys by. Experts say women find the egotistical male image unattractive. And as baby boomers start their own families, men themselves have grown more interested in children and home life. On a practical level, ad firms say economic hard times simply make family success a more reasonable goal for men than mammoth salaries.
Clearly Madison Avenue is sold on the notion of men playing a bigger domestic role, performing household chores and taking care of the kids. Stu Thorn, product manager for Brite, says, “We felt the concept was an appealing and relevant reflection of life within homes.” Does anyone disagree? Yep, women. The 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll conducted by The Roper Organization Inc. found that 63 percent of women surveyed thought that “most men are interested in their work and life outside the home and don’t pay much attention to things going on at home.” That’s up from 39 percent of the women in 1970. Even some image experts contend the Daddy-ad trend is verging on overkill. “It’s become a platitude,” says Ted Littleford, executive creative director of Leber Katz. “I’ve collected no less than seven ads that show a shirtless father holding a nude baby up to his chest or over his shoulder. It’s become a visual cliche.” Littleford says that in many cases the well-built young man with the naked baby has nothing to do with the product that’s being advertised, like a stereo-component system. “It’s not organic,” he says. Littleford defends his firm’s Oreo ad on the ground that it imitates a rite of passage many adults can still remember.
Most advertising executives concede that men are not exactly on the front lines in the battle against grease and grime. But who ever said advertising was supposed to show us as we really are? They argue that women who complain about men not doing enough around the house are all the more likely to love the sensitive, domestic dads–and the products they plug. Although the creators of the Oreo and Brite ads say they didn’t make their commercials to appeal specifically to men or women, MacDougall admits, “The research has shown that nothing pleases a woman like an ad with a father and a cute child.” And on Madison Avenue that’s what really matters–since everyone knows who still shops for almost everything from the floor wax to Daddy’s cologne.
