Browsing through the CNN website, I came across a story reporting that ABC Universal did not run a TV ad for female postpartum pads on the evening of the 2020 Academy Awards. The network labelled the ad “too descriptive and too graphic”; although it asked the manufacturer Frida Mom to edit the ad, these edits were not made and the ad did not consequently run.
Frida Mom posted the ad on YouTube introducing it as “the ad that did not run during the Oscars”. There is a slightly emotional introduction to the video which almost begs viewers to shed a tear at the fact that the TV network refused to run its work on the night of one of the most televised events in the world.
I do not find this to be fair.
There are 366 days in a year and 365 other days when Frida Mom could have bought airtime and placed the ad on the network. On any of those 366 days as well as on the night of the Oscars, they could have run with an edited ad and directed viewers to their site to show the entire creative spiel to their direct audience (moms to be, recent moms and their partners).
It might not have been what they wanted, but it would have got them on TV and generated all this buzz in a less defensive, tear-inducing and victimising manner. Maybe that there were things that the Academy Awards could have done differently and better this year, but refusing to run an ad for postpartum pads with the whole world watching is not to me one of them.
Irina Writes 