We’re gonna need a new phrase for “tone deaf”.
Professional Catholics are notoriously witless, but the Knights of Columbus has a new PSA that makes the average American Idol wannabe sound like Pavoratti.
It’s been running on FOX News. It shows a well dressed businessman enjoying a meal while a little girl stands outside, staring longingly at his plate of food through the window. Next thing you know, the little girl is sitting beside him, eating his dinner and smiling.
Ooooooo kaaaaaay…
Frankly, it made me think of deNiro in Taxi Driver, buying breakfast for Jodie Foster.
If you want to be optimistic about it, I guess it is a testament to the essential decency of the well meaning Knights who greenlit this ad that its pervy undertones and the dangerous unstreetwise message it sends to kids escaped them completely.
But for a Church whose reputation has been forever sullied by child-abusing priests, this PSA displays a poverty of judgement that shocks even me, a former Professional Catholic who’s witnessed or heard tell of truly ghastly PR bumbles.
And as someone who has also worked in marketing, this ad has “Oh crap, somebody think up a concept, the client will be here in an hour” written all over it too. I’d LOVE to know how much the agency stiffed the K of C for this piece of crap.
Some stuck up types will sniff: “Well, Kathy, I guess the Knights of Columbus are too busy being holy, charitable men to watch disgusting 1970s movies and detect child molestation in a nice tv ad.”
The fact is, the Knights behind this ad are the weird-os. No normal, non-naive, unworldly person could possibly think this ad was a good idea.
And that describes 99% of the non-Professional Catholic population — that is, the people you’re supposed to be advertising to. You know, your audience? Yeah, I know they aren’t as holy and educated and shit as YOU are, but they are the people you’re trying to impress.
And you’re failing.
Again.
What an embarrassment. Alas, though, not much of a surprise.
