Adwatch: AT&T Has A Hard-On For Cheeky Tees
T-shirts pop up everywhere—including commercial advertisements on your television screen.
Take, for instance, a pair of half-baked AT&T ads that are currently running in heavy rotation on a varied assortment of stations and programs. Part and parcel of the same ad campaign, they play on a decidedly modern fear—missing important cellular calls and by extension, essential, life-altering moments (a form of guilt that shares more than a passing resemblance to what economists refer to as “opportunity cost“).
AT&T would have you, the potential customer, believe that with their service, you’ll always in touch at a moment’s notice, which is a laughable conceit and one that iPhone users (such as yours truly) know all too well is not true. That old aphorism about putting lipstick on a pig seems particularly relevant here, but I digress…
In the first clip (posted below), hapless Ned is set to address a board of stuffed suits at a Very Important Corporate Meeting. Sporting a baby blue tee festooned with “MERGER!” on the front, Ned sends the gathered executives into a comical frenzy with his unexpected bombshell. As recriminations fly and the rancor rises to a fevered pitch, cue to a second Ned, off in the corner of the board room, bemoaning the fact that he doesn’t have any “bars here in Finland.” Without service, the ad continues, he misses out on a crucial voice mail from his boss instructing him…to remain silent on the proposed transaction. The meltdown, this ad implies, could have been avoided with AT&T. Oh Ned, you silly rabbit.
The second video is even more self-loathing. An overzealous Michael Phelps fan (this spot was timed to coincide with the Olympics, if you couldn’t guess), Mary misses out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to party with the decorated athlete because she has “no bars here in this podunk little town [she] just moved to.” Predictably, she does not field her friend’s urgent call, who is hanging nearby, unexpectedly collecting autographs and photos from the hunky swimming superstar, and her alter ego goes apeshit as a result. Stupid as the commercial is, the t-shirt is reminiscent, from a design perspective, of the golden-era in the history of the garment. From the ringer style to the bubble font to the actual text with the phonetics pun (”Phelps Phan”), it all speaks to the hand-made qualities that defined t-shirt production techniques in the 70’s. All for the cause, I suppose…
I’m not sure what the larger point of my musings are, but I imagine (and this is purely speculation) that both of these commercials sprung from the same creative wellspring—we can only hope they love tees as much as we do here at Found Item Clothing, Inc.. (The perfectionist I am, it should be noted that there are other ads in the same AT&T campaign that don’t feature t-shirts in any meaningful way.)
Follow-up: It has come to my attention that you can actually purchase the “MERGER!” shirt online. You can find it here. Meta and true.
