While Walmart, Amazon, Target and dozens of other retail giants are under-paying and under-protecting their “essential” workers and callously sending them off to the ventilators, the rest of us are being numbed at home with a blitz of cynical and shoddy consumer advertising.

While low-wage, uninsured food workers, with no real option to stay at home, are forced to put their lives on the line Dominos, Papa Johns, Little Caesars assure us that the million+ degree heat of their ovens and their contact-free processes will spare us from the dreaded virus. Burger King piles on by urging us to become a Couch Potatriot through their properly socially-distanced system that waives delivery fees.

Meanwhile, the big brands that can’t intrude directly to fill your empty stomach reach out in an effort to grab part of your emotional appetite.  All in an effort to keep themselves relevant and remembered in this time of Covid-19.

Budweiser reminds us they’ve donated $5 million and some airtime to the Red Cross and is using some of its talent with alcohol to make hand sanitizer…Apple touts its donation of millions of masks and protective gear to health care workers.  Coors Light grabbed lots of press attention by delivering 150 cans of beer to an elderly woman who had put a sign in her window complaining she was running out of brew.

All of this is what Atlantic writer Amanda Mull terms “disastertising.” In her recent piece, Pandemic Advertising Got Weird Fast.

Of course, advertising is essential to pay for most journalism…essential in funding the breathless hysteria of the cable news channels…and yes, to keep some semblance of the consumer economy alive.

I’m not knocking the act of advertising during the pandemic. But, I am at the point of needing a breathing device of some sort to keep me from downing in the Sea of Sameness in which this stuff floats.

As you’ve no doubt discovered from your own tv viewing the through line of this pandemic advertising is “We’re All in This Together”, or some such horseshit.

You and I are not alone.  Just take a look at this video compilation of the coronavirus advertising from some of the Big Brands. Cue the soft, somber piano music.

Tech to the Rescue

Is it any wonder that some wags created a parody, quite accurately in this case, of the ease with which a simple “Uncertain Times App” could be used in place of expensive agency creative teams?

If You Don’t Have the App,  Try This

You don’t have to go all high tech to swim in the Sea of Sameness. Just grab a white board or chalk board and follow this example from Marketoonist.com

Click to enlarge

It’s beyond sad to discover so much of the currently functioning American economy is held together by the sacrifices of low wage workers and shoddy advertising.  But, even more tragic are the corporate contortions that attempt to equate opportunistic behavior with public service in the name of ‘togetherness.”

Roger

P.S.  To end on a more hopeful note, in the words of  “disastertising” writer Amanda Hull:

“If disasters have any silver lining, it’s that they give people a rare opportunity to reimagine society. When the pandemic ends, America might try to create a future that’s less reliant on broad public knowledge of virus-killing pizza ovens.”