These are two new commercials for the Wii aimed at women and featuring Wii Fit Plus.
I love that Nintendo is actually advertising to women (that’s really more than you can say for either of the other two consoles – and no, the PSP Lilac thing doesn’t count). I also like that they’re recognizing the single biggest thing women say keeps them from gaming – that their lives are too busy. Both of these commercials showed women with very busy lives.
What I don’t like about the commercials is that they showed women doing all the traditional things women are expected to do around the house (feed the kids, do the shopping and other errands, do the cleaning, etc.), while their husbands get to sleep later and relax more. I was a little annoyed about it in the first ad, but by the time I got to the end of the second ad, where she’s vacuuming and he’s playing, I was pretty annoyed about it. Granted, you could argue that she got to play earlier, but she also got up earlier and still got in a full day of work and errands.
Now, it may be completely true that this is still typical (statistics would bear that out), but that doesn’t mean that the image of it needs to be reinforced, further normalizing it and perpetuating it. That’s why it annoys me.
It would have been so easy for them to subtly change that message in these ads, while still showing women with crazy busy days! Have the couple wake up together and head out to breakfast. The wife grabs her toast like in the ad while the husband is seen feeding the kids so she can catch some Wii Fit time. Then she runs off to work (and presumably he does too, since he was wearing a suit when we last saw him) and she runs an errand on her way home and walks into the room at the same time as her husband, who is also carrying something from errands (say she has the bag of groceries and he has a dry cleaning bag or something), they put their stuff down and join their kids playing with the Wii. And everybody is pitching in and she’s still just as busy, but he doesn’t look like a totally crappy husband in the process!
But no, we get busy housewives/mothers/businesswomen who do everything and still find time to work out while their husbands just get to play after they get home. Can we try again please?
an Ad a Day 