• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, July 18, 2024

There are no smiling parents or kiddies excited to be scouting bargain backpacks in Amazon’s latest back-to-school campaign. There’s not a treacly moment in it.

Rather, the massive e-tailer has managed to nail the perfect tone: sardonic parental fiscal realism. Take that, kids.

Last year’s Amazon spot with Randall Park paved the way.  Ostensibly about saving money (key for when the price of eggs was so high) it featured Park (the sensible, occasionally overwhelmed parent Louis Huang in “Fresh Off the Boat”) standing outside a busy school with a middle-school kid and his dad. 

“Just spend less on your kids,” Park the spokes-dad announces, giving permission to American parents and caregivers to lose the guilt.

 “Why would a person spend more money?”  the kid pipes up.  

“See, he’s 8 and he gets it” Park says, approvingly. 

“I’m 10,” the boy corrects him. “That’s less impressive,” Park responds.

This year’s campaign, which runs from July 18 to Aug. 18,  stars stand-up comedian, actor, mother, and podcast queen Michelle Buteau, who immediately gets down to business.

“I love my kids,” she says while walking around school grounds, “but I also love not being broke.”

Then she mentions all the things she got for less at Amazon -- like “a water bottle they definitely won’t lose,” as an adorably messy kid loudly sips on his enormous bright yellow one. She talks about the “latest rizzy riz clothes, no cap” as she passes a trio of well-dressed teens who snicker at her attempt to be cool. She ends up in a lower school lunchroom and touts lunchboxes “for a homemade meal they’ll barely touch.”  

It’s knowingly jokey about the ups-and-downs of child-raising -- but most of all, she’s getting it done.

She ends by reassuring parents to “spend less on your little freeloaders” as “every dollar you don’t spend on them is a dollar you haven’t spent on them.” 

Calling kids “little freeloaders” is amusing but getting edgy. 

Much worse, there’s a mom in a Perdue chicken commercial who makes delicious chicken and qualifies it with “not that these yahoos deserve it,” meaning her rambunctious kids.

I assume the reference is less to Jerry Yang and more to Jonathan Swift, the author of the satirical “Gulliver’s Travels,” who coined the term to mean disgusting brutes. In common slang, it’s come to mean a limited, uneducated person, not a loving word for kids.

But back to Amazon’s in-house campaign.

In a similar vein, Amazon is bringing back its  “Dorm Roomz” video series, offering college students furnishing their dorms the best “vibes for less.” 

Some of the videos have been hosted by influencers, but this year’s “Dormz” tour stars Philadelphia 76er’s recent recruit Jared McCain, who twirls a lampshade like a basketball.  It’s deadpan and hilarious.

The dude’s a natural actor and performer, and I predict a huge future for him in the spokes-game. He welcomes us into his 250-square-foot room, with its “calming corner” nail salon, partial as he is to getting a “Glo-getter”manicure.  (His polished nails are one of the things people make fun of him for, along with his dancing, but he just laughs it off.)  

He starts with showing us the “tons of clothes” in his closet -- for example, an array of pajama pants. Then he heads over to his desk, and his collection of journals, including one he grabs fresh out of the Amazon box that is his “journal that I use to journal about journaling.” We get to see every corner filled with personal embellishments, like his “affirmation mirror” and crystals. 

Then “John the RA “ knocks on his door.  John tells him he can’t live there anymore because he’s “not a student.”  

In his remarkably self-effacing and good-natured way, McCain repeats the “not a student”  part in air quotes and excuses himself, leaving us wanting more.

Incidentally, the company just wrapped its  Prime Day sales event, this time so popular that its ad portal crashed briefly last Tuesday evening, according to Bloomberg.

As a result, Amazon’s self-service ad system was largely unusable for sellers during that time. 

Hey, stuff happens -- as any slightly overwhelmed parent, trying to save a buck, knows.