• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, May 2, 2024

Despite our distressing and divisive times, when an issue becomes unrelentingly oppressive, folks do speak up.

This week, Americans have united on social media to express their outrage at a new enemy of the people. 

I’m talking about “What a Pro Wants,” that AT&T commercial that broke during March Madness and now airs incessantly during NBA playoff games. As such, it has invaded the psyches of basketball fandom so mightily that it’s causing sudden, violent outbursts about it on X and elsewhere.

(It also runs during NHL playoff games, and hockey fans are not amused.)

One sportswriter confessed: “I'm ready to call it: …the Chet/SGA ‘What a pro wants’ is the worst commercial in history.”

Another hoophead posted: “if ratings are down this nba playoffs reasons THEY will give: - lack of stars - small markets – refs. REAL reason: -‘what a pro wants’ commercial"

A third viewer thought the spot was so rancid he had to invent a more rank way of saying it stinks. He came up with: “It's so bad that it’s like sniffing someone's broken arm in a cast.”

And it all smelled so fresh in the beginning.

The spot, starring Oklahoma City Thunder’s Chet Holmgren and teammate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, an otherwise charming but relatively unknown combo, was one of six in AT&T’s “Connect to the Madness” campaign that broke March 17 on the first day of the March Madness games.

Five other commercials in the campaign also feature NBA and WNBA stars in varying scenarios, poking fun at themselves within the larger framework of promoting the company’s best plan options and network connections.

But "What a Pro Wants” seems to be the most played, and for whatever reason has, become a magnet for hostility.

It shows Holmgren and SGA leaving a hotel at night, headed for the team bus. They look collegial and cool in their black-leather-jacketed civilian clothes, chilling, when Holmgren gets a ping on his phone. This is the part that gets a little sell-y, when Holmgren says, “AT&T just sent me a heads-up on the best plan for me.” SGA seems interested, and Holmgren says, “They know what a pro wants.” SGA responds, “What a pro needs.”

With that, they both launch into, um, “singing” that pro- version of “What a Girl Wants,” the hit song that Christina Aguilera released with her first album in 1999.

The gender reverse is funny for these two dudes. But the musical choice is a head-scratcher, given that neither pro athlete was born when it came out.

But they give the duet their best shot, warbling the lyrics in a weak, decidedly off-key way.  The guys themselves admit it, with SG-A saying, “Good, a little flat, but we’ll get better.”

Mainly, it seems that the painfully non-melodic sound they achieve is what viewers find so crazy-making. The heavy rotation that the spot runs in (like during every single commercial break) adds profoundly to the punishment.

"It is music’s capacity to take over your mind and invade your inner experience that makes it so terrifying," Thomas Keenan, director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College, once told the press. He was speaking of using music as torture, a far more crushing and important issue than offering an earworm in a well-meaning commercial, of course.

Ironically, AT&T’s vice president of advertising and social media told Ad Age in mid-March that the campaign aims to “capture” how the March Madness tournament “lights up group chats,” and “reignites ‘water cooler’ talk.” 

Be careful what you wish for: Rather than the games,  this commercial has lit up the interwebs, for all the wrong reasons.

There is one theory that viewers remember ads that annoy them more than the pleasing ones. 

In the 1950s, ads repeated certain phrases nonstop, like “Stronger than dirt” for Ajax, and the words were hammered into the collective consciousness.

The AT&T ad is a little different. The spot invades the collective unconscious through a disturbing sound, and gets under the skin.

Perhaps there’ll be no relief until the end of June.

Still, that allows time to switch the group hate to another worthy  challenger.

Consider “Wingstop No Flex Zone." The spot shows  a family eating chicken while taking part in  an intense game of Jenga. It also features a pitiless, ear-mocking soundtrack that we hear too often.  So we're looking at you, "Wingstop," to give “What a Pro Wants” a run for its money in the NBA Cringe Ad Olympics.