Got PMS?

The California Milk Processor Board altered a PMS-themed ad campaign after two weeks because of criticism to its subject matter.  The original campaign portrayed men as the victims of temperamental women who were well, “pms-ing.” The goal of the campaign was to highlight that milk can actually soften the effects of PMS symptoms, according to ad campaign spokeswoman Tatum Wan.

As a marketer, I found the campaign clever and humorous.  Ah humor… The Super Bowl is watched by millions of people, many of whom are not football fans. Why? Because of humorous, heart-warming and sometimes quite inappropriate (but funny) commercials.  It will be a sad day when ALL advertisers give in to the pressures of the very few overly sensitive consumers that take themselves far too seriously.  In fact, I thought AdRants did a pretty good job of summing it up in a July 22 post by Steve Hall who wrote: “Unlike many, we have no problem with this campaign. Why? Because if we can’t poke fun at ourselves, what’s left? If we can’t inject a bit of humor into our lives, we might as well all become monks. Oh wait, even they know how to have fun. If we can’t take a moment and just chuckle, we’re going to turn into a world filled with cause groups that will dumb us down to the point where we all turn into emotionless robotic automatons.”

The question we’ll soon be asking ourselves is “Got funny ads?”And the answer will be “No.” Because after all, great humor must have an element of truth and it seems as though the small but humorous element of “truth” hurts too much.  The original URL was www.everythingidoiswrong.org, but now consumers are being redirected to  www.gotdiscussion.org, which is meant to “encourage discussion of the issue,” which I can promise you is not nearly as funny as “everything I do is wrong…”

What are your thoughts? Humorous or humiliating? I’d like to know… See one of many articles here.