• by Charles Wright , Op-Ed Contributor, June 16, 2017

Of all the holidays that we celebrate perhaps none more accurately demonstrates our bi-polarity than Father’s Day. On the one hand, we as a society have established the second Sunday in June to reverentially acknowledge the role of fatherhood in our lives. On the other hand, our media from movies to television to advertising have consistently found success in portraying dad as a feckless, boorish, ignorant, useless appendage to the family. 

As retailers create sales promotions pushing colognes, tools, apparel and the other clichéd gifts that demonstrate our love and devotion to dad, the pervasive image that clumsy old out-of-touch dad lacks the ability to use those tools (as in when intelligent, hip, savvy mom suggests, “Honey let’s just call a plumber”) demonstrates a cultural tension that has most certainly had some diminishing impact on our view of dad.

A former client of mine was once of the opinion that when marketers “talk down” to their consumers in favor of the device of a cheap laugh – there is the potential of a latent effect concurrently associating the brand with the gimmicky device in the mind of consumers. Since we rarely test the unaided awareness of character portrayal in our marketing communications, there isn’t a data set for me to refer to. However, my gut tells me that we might be shocked at the response to a question such as “of all the brands that you are aware of, which of them portray fathers as out-of-touch with the times?” Has our willingness to get a laugh started to erode brand equity in the minds of consumers just as a sinkhole does the foundation of a house? Beyond just being hypocritical and offensive, the pervasive idea of “dumb dad” may actually constitute an opaque brand health cum business performance issue for brands. Something for us as marketers to consider and a subject of what I will be considering in future research projects.

But in the spirit of this time of year when we celebrate our dads – all is not lost with as recently there have been a series of commercials that may indicate that dad’s reputation is undergoing an image makeover. Perhaps this is just an indication that the pendulum is swinging from a generation and a half of Clark Griswold, Al Bundy, and Ray Romano to more “with it” fathers such as Dre Johnson (Anthony Anderson’s character on TV Show Blackish). Perhaps it’s most telling that Ed O’Neill is indicative of this swing, having gone from bumbling, stumbling, clueless Al Bundy to a savvier Jay Pritchett.

The hope is that we can now evolve our portrayal of dad to return the dignity and worth of this essential role in our society and in doing so perhaps prevent damaging the equity of the brands that we are entrusted to perform and grow. If recent advertising campaigns are any indication, then perhaps we as an industry have come to the realization that the dumb dad portrayal is a disservice to us all.