ohmidog!

Continuing our review of the use of dogs in advertising, we look today at two ads from the same dog food company – one that’s cool, one that’s creepy.

It generally bothers me to see dogs being manipulated with special effects – in part because they’re special enough already, in part because it is usually done to make them appear more human.

Sometimes it seems we have trouble letting dogs be dogs, and insist on saddling them with the baggage of our own highly dysfunctional species.

The only special effect I find appealing when it comes to dogs in advertisements, or for that matter movies, is slow motion — used magnificently in the Pedigree commercial above.

Compare that to this one for Pedigree’s DentaStix, in which dogs, through special effects, are equipped with human dentures. I cringe every time I see it.

Pedigree has built a Denture Your Dog webpage where you can upload a photo of your dog, equip him or her with human dentures, then type in the words you want your dog to be saying.

Objectionable as we find that, we had to give it a try, so I uploaded an Ace picture and had him say how humiliating the whole thing was, scolding Pedigree in the process for its anthropomorphic — a word neither Ace nor I can say without computer assistance — ad.

I tried to post it to YouTube but couldn’t quite figure it out, being human.

In my view, the first ad is stellar. As for the doggie denture ad campaign I give it a thumbs down, even though it seems to have been highly popular.

The first increases our understanding of dogs, the second obfuscates it (another word I need computer assistance to both say and spell). “Blurs” would have been a better word choice.

The only half-joking point is, until we learn to be more responsible for the words that come out of our own mouths, maybe we shouldn’t be assuming the right to put them – or human dentures — in a dog’s.

All of our “Woof in Advertising” selections can be found archived here.