I fully admit to being a cynic about advertising, but there’s one TV commercial that throws me beyond mere cynicism and into just sputtering, angry confusion.
It’s that damn commercial for TheLadders.com. The one with the guy playing tennis.
TheLadders is an online job search service that purports to specifically cater to job hunters looking for six-figure jobs. The service itself is predicated on an elitist idea to begin with: don’t want to get caught up with all the riff-raff messing around on Monster.com? Come to TheLadders, where you won’t have to even mingle online with the less fortunates.
And as unsavory as that might sound, I don’t really have too much of a problem with it. If they want to fill a specific niche in the recruitment industry, more power to them.
But you don’t need to revel in the elitism. And TheLadders does exactly that with this commercial. The spot opens with a WASPy-looking guy about to serve in a tennis match when a woman runs in and collides with him going for the ball. The crowd runs onto the court, cluttering it with their rudeness, awkward racquet swinging and general rowdiness. The man glares, annoyed, at the people who have ruined his tennis game as a voice-over informs us, “If you think about it, this is the trouble with most job search sites.”
The trouble? “When you let everyone play, nobody wins.” The first version of the commercial, which started airing in January 2008, ended with the announcer saying what was presumably TheLadders’ tagline: “The premium job site for only $100k-plus jobs, and only $100k-plus people.”
Somebody at TheLadders must’ve realized just how awful that sounded (or, you know, somebody without a jackass gene must’ve taken a moment to ask what the hell a “$100k-plus person” is) because the version posted on its Web site is tagged “MarchRevise:” the apparent revision ends with the tagline, “Only $100k-plus jobs, and only $100k-plus job seekers.” Awkward, but better.
But now these ads are back, and they end with what appears to be a strange, middle-ground compromise between the two: “Only $100k-plus jobs, and only $100k-plus talent.” Still bad.
Let’s set aside the notion that there’s something both seriously flawed and vaguely disgusting about using money as a means of determining someone’s personhood or talent. We’ll even set aside the uncomfortable imagery of the “riff-raff” crowding the guy including a bunch of minorities, women and overweight people.
It’s “$100k-plus people” with “$100k-plus talent” who helped the economy nearly collapse, who euchred unsuspecting people out of house and home, who played games with the banking system and stock market, and who threatened the financial stability of t countless families who wanted to live pleasant lives and send kids to college. This happened under the watch and actions of people TheLadders would term “$100k-plus people” with “$100k-plus talent.”
I don’t mean to paint with broad strokes. I don’t doubt that there are people who make well more than six figures who do good, honest work, and I’m sure some of them even work on Wall Street. And yes, a part of it may be a little personal: As someone who’d be thrilled to find any employment post-April 30, six figures or not, I can’t help but cringe when these ads come on.
But one of the few good things to come out of the economic crisis was the national reassessment of what constituted being successful: All of a sudden, being ridiculously rich isn’t a source of admiration as it once was. All of a sudden, Teach for America and Doctors Without Borders and just selflessness in general didn’t just feel right — it felt aspirational.
TheLadders ads are predicated on bringing us back to a last-decade way of thinking. And that’s not just bad advertising; it’s bad for us all.
Joe Dellosa is an advertising senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
