Verizon promo enlists famous people to tell kids ‘We don’t need more famous people’
By mdelaney
In a new Verizon ad airing during this weekend’s Final Four, celebrities frankly tell children to stop trying to be famous and pursue careers in science instead. However, the well-meaning message is delivered terribly.
March Madness has been a surprise success in terms of ratings, and Verizon is aiming to use the tournament’s grand finale as a platform to spread a message for aspiring athletes, actors and models around the country.
Only problem is the message doesn’t come across as the mindful reality check it’s supposed to.
Essentially, it’s famous people telling your kids to stop dreaming big and get a real job — in this case, one of four million available science-related jobs.
Delivered collectively by LeBron James, David Villa, Adriana Lima and Drew Brees, the promo starts off innocently with children talking about their ideal occupations. It’s what you’d expect from pre-teens: “an actress or model,” said the first girl, while the three boys that followed stated they or a friend wanted to play pro sports.
Then Verizon rolls out the cold hard facts: there are only 5,800 professional models, 2,880 professional football players, 850 professional soccer plays and 642 professional basketball players in the United States. Those numbers alone are potent enough to shatter dreams. But in case you didn’t get the point, Verizon takes it a step further and has each celebrity state their only lines of the ad (outside of LeBron’s lead-in):
“We don’t need more Drews.”
“We don’t need more Villas”
“We don’t need more Adrianas”
“We don’t need more LeBrons”
Youch. They’re pretty much telling every kid, “Get used to using your brain because you’re never going to make money how we do … why not science? #weneedmore”
Even worse is their joint ignorance of the sports world — and 75 percent of the figures in this commercial are athletes themselves!
“We don’t need more LeBrons.” Uh, yeah we do so the NBA wouldn’t have the parity problem it does and maybe the regular season would be more interesting.
“We don’t need more Drews.” Deep down I wish college football produced one ‘Drew’ per year so we can get some equitable quarterback play in the NFL and teams wouldn’t be relegated to uncompetitive purgatory Cleveland Browns-style (I’m not too knowledgeable on soccer or modeling, so I’ll abstain from commenting on them).
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It really is an educational message that horrendously botches its landing. And sadly, it’ll probably detract from the real point of the ad: science jobs are in need but a lot of children throughout the country don’t have access to resources that can lead them down that path. If kids and parents can fight through the pretentious air of Verizon’s promo, maybe they can do the world some good by realizing their “actual dreams” of becoming scientists.