Advertisers often use humor in their commercials to make them more appealing to consumers, and lately it seems marketers of cleaning products are leading the pack. Procter & Gamble, PS Cleaning
Products, and S.C. Johnson all use humor in ads to promote their housecleaning wares, and one of the most popular features a pair of wise-cracking birds in a spot for Johnson's Windex glass cleaner.
In a recent commercial two birds play a prank on a homeowner lounging on his patio. One bird flies to the front of the house to ring the doorbell. The man goes to answer the door but finds no one.
Meanwhile, the bird returns to the back of the house and closes the sparkling, Windex-clean sliding glass door, which the man smacks into when he returns. The two birds laugh hysterically. "There's a
history in American culture about animals," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "You have sincere animals such as Rin Tin Tin and
Lassie who are essentially heroic. And you've also got your wise-cracking animals. ... You turn an animal into something that becomes a commentary on the silliness of human life."
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