No one Wants to See You Naked, Either! – Draft #2
The Super Bowl is known for many things: great team match-ups, great food, great rivalries, and great commercials. Commercials that are sure to burn up the conversation around the water cooler (or coffee pot) on the Monday morning following. Commercials that are told, re-told, and viewed for endless minutes on YouTube or other websites. Commercials that, according to MSNBC.com’s Bill Ward, cost $3 million for a 30-second spot. However, there is one thing that makes these Super Commercials the same as all the other ones: the use of rhetoric and ancient styles to persuade the general, commercial-watching public into buying their product, item, service, or value statement.
On the surface, and probably to the eyes of the ancients, these commercials violate the basic idea of kairos, which is the basic appropriateness of a thing (233). These commercials usually feature scantily-clad, young, beautiful women shilling beer and a lifestyle. They feature men pummeling each other over candy bars or Doritos. However, our society has become so inured to sex and violence and so familiar with the basic equating of gifts with love, that for the general American audience, most commercials probably do not ping many people’s sense of propriety.
During the 2008 Super Bowl Teleflora showed a commercial that starts out with a woman, Diane, getting a delivery. She is told that they are flowers and her co-workers “ooh” and “aww”. When she opens the box of flowers, we see that they are not bright in color, are somewhat wilted, and appear to be sparse in number. The flowers begin to talk and proceed to say, “Oh no! Look at the mug on you! Diane! You’re a train wreck! That’s why he only sent a box of flowers!” (Teleflora’s Talking Flowers, 2009). The commercial voice-over then says that by ordering flowers in a box, you are taking a chance because “you never know what they’ll say” and the flowers then deliver their final insult, “No one wants to see you naked!” The voiceover tells the audience that Teleflora’s flowers are designed and delivered by local florists and shows a delivery man delivering a beautiful bouquet of flowers to someone’s home. The voiceover concludes by saying “That’s the Teleflora difference.” (Teleflora’s Talking Flowers, 2009) The commercial cuts back to Diane holding her box of flowers when her co-worker, Gary, starts to say, “I’d like to see you…” Diane cuts him off.
The insults from the flowers, the image of beautiful, fresh flowers being delivered by an attractive delivery man, and the subsequent voiceover lauding the merits of ordering from Teleflora all want to lead the viewer to think that a woman receiving flowers would rather have them from this service than another. By trying to get the viewers to believe that these other flowers will send the wrong message to their intended recipient, the writers of this commercial use a sort of metonymy: they use “flowers” to mean an inadequate gift and, by extension, an inadequate statement of intent or affection; and they use “bouquet” to mean a superlative gift that perfectly conveys a depth of desire and emotion. The emphasis on the words “boxed” and “flowers” and the tone of voice that the narrator uses shows derision and negativity and is a direct effort to equate boxed with dislike or disgust. Boxed really has no connotations – positive or negative – but this commercial has not only made it a new four-letter word, but made flowers a dirty word as well.
This is only a 30-second spot and yet the word “flowers” is used five times in the first twenty seconds of the commercial. Repeating the word over and over, and showing various people in the commercial saying “flowers” is very bluntly and adeptly drawing our attention to the fact that this is about flowers. What makes this choice of repetition interesting is that it is used in conjunction with the previously mentioned metonymy. The commercial stops using the word “flowers” once Teleflora has been introduced as the better choice – Teleflora has bouquets that are “hand arranged and hand delivered” (Teleflora’s Talking Flowers, 2009), thereby implying that bouquets done by hand equal not only higher quality, but that bouquets also represent better feelings. Crowley and Hawhee say that repetition is sometimes used when there is a lack of vocabulary (243), but in this instance, that is not the case. Here, “flowers” is the word used scornfully to really make the point that mere flowers are bad, but bouquets are awesome. Why send horrible flowers when bouquets better show your feelings?
The arguments for using Teleflora and not using other mail or phone order flower services plays upon two main things: That the senders of flowers (assumed to be men, based on the voiceover’s use of the pronoun “she” and “her” when warning against the dreaded flowers in a box) want to please the recipient and that the recipient is going to find a hidden meaning in the flowers based on how she gets them and where they come from. While it is true that both sender and receiver want to be pleased and satisfied with any flower purchase, by having the “other” flowers be ugly and insulting is driving the point home a bit harshly. Furthermore, by making the co-worker of Dianne who gives her flowers be less attractive than the hunky delivery guy, this visual argument seems to be saying that better flowers come from better looking people.
There are no real facts used in this commercial. Instead, the commercial relies entirely upon the visual contrast between the two types of flower ordering – the ugly, insulting flowers versus the silent yet beautiful flowers and the unattractive co-worker versus the good looking delivery man. Because of this use of hyperbole, the argument is not only weak, but it is completely overshadowed by the offensiveness of the commercial. It plays upon the worst fears of most women – that the man that they are with finds them ugly, unattractive, and unworthy of receiving “nicer” flowers. Therefore, it does not achieve its goal, which is to get the viewer to use Teleflora for their flower needs. By not showing a realistic representation of flowers in a box and comparing them side-by-side with a comparable bouquet from a Teleflora florist, they are unable to truly support their claim that Teleflora is any better. Then they took it a step further. They personified the flowers and then created a hyperbole for the circumstances under which a man would send what kind of flowers. They made the flowers the proxy voice of the man that sent them to Diane and by extension, the company those flowers come from. And to an extent, the director of the commercial personified the setting. They took an actress and turned her in to a sad, single woman in her grayish and boring cubicle with her boring and boorish co-workers receiving dying and foul-mouthed flowers. But have no fear! Your life will not be boring, boorish, and gray! Like Dorothy opening the door after the twister, opening your door to a Teleflora man will bring you happiness and color and light! Boxed flowers are sent by men who don’t want to remove your clothes.
At the risk of over-generalizing based on personal experience, men (they specifically use the gender “he” in this commercial) typically equate the quality of flowers with the quantity of dollars. To imply that the packaging of flowers communicates feelings or desires is misleading. While the old phrase “actions speak louder than words” does hold true sometimes, it is safe to say that in this case, the fact that flowers were sent at all speaks louder than where the actual flowers came from. And in general, that would be a fine point to make. It would be a typical point to make. The basis of advertising is “X is better than Y and here is why we think so”. This commercial is no different, however it does engage in a bit of hyperbole when, at the end of the commercial, the personified flowers “speak” for the whole of mankind in telling Diane that “No one wants to see you naked!” This exaggerated statement is not only used to drive home the point that boxed flowers are not only the bad product, but that boxed flowers also make a statement about a person’s physical attractiveness.
The style of this commercial is exceptionally plain. It has a very bald statement of its purpose which is to convince the viewers that boxed flowers do not send the happy, warm message that flowers typically convey. The commercial places the characters in an office cubical, something that millions of Americans can relate to. The characters themselves do not look like the glamorous Hollywood types so frequently used in Super Bowl commercials. The words that were chosen were plain. No specifically flowery language, if you will excuse the pun. This is simple language, simple people, and simple associations.
So, okay, there was judicious use of different ancient writing styles in this particular commercial. That alone does not make this commercial special. If the ancient styles and tropes were no longer used then there would not be any more commercials. Or any television. Or any written or spoken words. These tropes and styles have been used by writers and storytellers of so long because they hold up. They help to get the reader or viewer engaged and keep them that way. In the case of this commercial, it worked. Even though it was tasteless and stupid, I kept watching because I simply could not believe that a badly animated flower just said, “No one wants to see you naked.” Sadly, it was no trip to Oz and the flowers really did say that and it is just as idiotic two years later as it was the night I saw it for the first time.
Works Cited
Crowley, Shannon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed. N.p.: Longman, 2003. 228-63. Web.
3 Oct. 2010.
“Teleflora’s Talking Flowers”. www.teleflora.com. 1 February 2009.
< http://www.teleflora.com/teleflora-super-bowl-flower-commercial.asp
Ward, Bill. “Commercials: From Foul to Fabulous” 2 February 2009. 3 October 2010.
