Gee, my Arafat Chips thread landed over here in Great Debates, so I thought I’d throw this open for discussion, too, now that I’m a Grown-Up:
Cantor-Fitzgerald—the company that lost 600-some employees at the World Trade Center—has just released a new TV commercial. Some of the surviving employees talk about how important it is to “keep the company alive,” for the sake of the dead employees’ families, the Good Ol’ USA, etc. Opinion is divided (in the ad world, among the famlilies, etc.) on whether this is a legitimate approach or the worst kind of cynical use of 9/11.
I’m completely blank on this one, I can see both sides of the argument. I can’t find a link, though, darnit. What’s YOUR opinion, Doper on the Street?
There was a story about this on NPR the other day (Link). The chief spokes-creep for CF’s ad agency gave one of the most unconvincing aruguments in favor of this ad campaign (think Martin Short’s weasly-lawyer-on-60-minutes). The best she could come up with is something along the lines of “well, CF is commited to helping the families, therefore CF must make money.”
I dunno. Yes, they are perfectly entitled to advertise. But using 9/11 as a backdrop just doesn’t sit right.
I don’t have a problem with it. CF donates something like 25 percent of their profits to helping families of their employees. They were profoundly affected by 9/11. I see nothing disrespectful about this.
Am I the only one who, seeing the OP was by Eve, assuming this had something to do with Eddie Cantor and Zelda Fitzgerald?
Anyways. Haven’t seen the commericals, so can’t rightly say. I don’t see anything per se wrong with a company talking about a tragedy that directly hurt it, and talking about that tragedy to explain why they need support and employees. But then, I’m from DC, where it seems half the commercials are of companies that offer no real products for consumers (Lockheed-Martin, Douglass, etc.) talking about how good they are for the country, so I’m sort of used to it.
Now, if the commercials did feature Eddie Cantor and Zelda Fitzgerald, you betcha I’d invest through that company!
I only saw clips from the ads, on the NBC News. I think the major complaint (maybe from compeititors?) is that “guilt” is not really a fair way to win customers. “A lot of us got killed by terrorists, so invest through our company or you’re not a good American and you’re spitting on the graves of the dead!”
Of course, all companies have to advertise, and the question is, if not this, then, what?
Did they ever advertise (on TV) before? For the life of me, I can’t remember seeing a CF commercial on TV. I don’t even really understand what they do, much less how they advertise it to the general public.
I wonder if they’re trying to deflect some criticism … if they made just a regular old commercial (All the cool kids use CF! You should too! <cue rock music soundtrack>), I can imagine that some people would point out that in light of the great loss at Cantor on 9/11 that such a commercial was disrespectful. I’m speculating that many Americans who wouldn’t have recognized the Cantor-Fitzgerald name prior to 9/11 will do so now, simply because there were so many stories in the news about that one particular company (and with good reason). Of all the businesses that lost people in the WTC, Cantor-Fitz is probably the one that is most strongly linked with 9/11 in the public mind.
If the TV viewing public already hears “Cantor-Fitzgerald” and thinks “omigod, the horror!”, I can see why the company wants to work with that, rather than ignore it, and follow up with “yes, it was terrible, but we’re rebuilding and keeping the families in mind.”
Personally the commercials that appalled me were the post-911 ones for car sales. Their basic message seemed to be that they were patriotically offering low financing rates and it was our duty as Americans to go out and buy a car to keep the economy rolling.
I haven’t seen the Cantor-Fitzgerald ads, but to me, it could be argued that they did legitimately experience a great tragedy and are sincere in acknowledging this. I don’t find it any more exploitive than the signs acknowledging the deaths of Dave Thomas or Sam Walton that appeared outside of Wendys or WalMarts.
> Am I the only one who, seeing the OP was by Eve, assuming
> this had something to do with Eddie Cantor and Zelda
> Fitzgerald?
Even stranger than that, I thought this was about TV commercials about a mathematical theorem. There was a famous mathematician named Georg Cantor. I figured that Fitzgerald was some other mathematician I’ve never heard of and he and Cantor created some math theorem, which is now being mentioned in a TV commercial. Yeah, on second thought, that makes no sense whatsoever, but that’s what occurred to me.
Yeah, I hear they’ve signed him as spokesman for the new Dodge Infiniti campaign. His tagline will be “They’re not all the same, but they’re all Infinitis.”
I’ve only seen news clips about the ads, with only short snippets, but the tone seemed to me to be more like “We’ve been through a lot; we know what’s important; we take life seriously; we’re fundamentally a more solid and mature organization now than most of our competitors.” And they were, in fact, the only company that took what most at the time thought would be a fatal blow. I don’t really object to their using that fact to try to recover from it.
I haven’t seen the ad, and even after reading this thread I’m not entirely sure what it’s for. Are they trying to get new business? Are they, as others have indicated, hiring? Or are they just letting people know they are around?
If it’s the latter, I can certainly understand it. I work in an area where I was looking into something that C-F was doing. But their whole division (or at least a good part of it, including all the main managers) was wiped out in the attack. I, and many others, had heard they were not going to restart that division. However, more recently one of my managers found that they were indeed restarting it and continuing their work. So I can certainly understand their wanting to get that message out to the public.
If it’s looking for business, well, that’s pretty bad. But I was more disgusted with the various car companies who implied that we should buy their cars to show how patriotic we were and to “keep America running” (or whatever their stupid slogans were).
I’ve only seen clips from the ads, but I got the impression that they were to both tell people they still existed, and to put out the nets for new business.