AT&T Future President/Train Advertisement
(Please click on the link above to view ad being analyzed)
The first time I saw this advertisement I thought oh wow I could change my ticket using my phone, is that legit? Then I realized it cost money to use the internet on my phone and I switched from AT&T to Verizon, so it didn't affect me anyway.
The second time I saw this commercial I paid attention to the fact that the president they are predicting for "Sometime in the Future" was white. I sat and thought long and hard about it and realized that the commercial which may have been relevant a few years ago no longer is, since we now have a biracial President currently in office. Some of the messages I got from this advertisement were: (1) what's happening now is just a fluke, (2) we have a biracial president, so what? and (3) the next presidents are going to be white. I personally drew the conclusion that the company AT&T favors white people in the white house, since their commercial is depicting a white president.
In the commercial I recognized that the mother could be considered racially ambiguous but the more I see the commercial the more clear it is that she is white. Even if one parent was white and another was Latino/Latina or Asian, or another race other than white I think it could have been a very effective commercial. I just find it interesting that a company that sells products from another company (Apple) who bases themselves on originality is so set on depicting the old way of thinking about U.S. presidency. Further more I feel like AT&T is catering to a specific audience in their portrayal of the future president. I personally switched to Verizon for my own reasons, but as a person of color and a former faithful AT&T customer this commercial would have given me a reason to switch. I think the company needs to pay more attention to the message a commercial like this is sending and the time (aka having a non-white president) in which the commercial is being created.
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