Ads at Hotdocs
4 May 2006, late afternoon
An advert is played for Cadillac’s new Escalade before every movie at Hotdocs begins. At the end of the commercial someone in the crowd will boo, jeer, or hiss at the screen, which results in lots of claps and laughter from the rest of the audience. I am sure the SUV hating hippies love that they are sticking it to the man. Still, who do they think is subsidizing the festival? God knows I hate SUVs, but booing Cadillac because they are funding a really good film festival is, well, stupid. Though, to be fair, Cadillac was stupid for expecting the adverts to go over well.
The worst thing is though, if Cadillac feels that after all this, they’re not getting what they thought they would by sponsoring the event, they might pull out of sponsoring future Hot Docs and the festival will lose out on a big sponsor (Cadillac has been sponsoring hot docs for some time now I think). Resulting in HotDocs not being able to show as many films in the future.
And although there are people in the audience that will respond negatively, I’m also pretty sure there are people in the audience who drive Cadillacs and SUVs of other brands as well.
Some people just like to bite the hand that feeds them and think they’re going to make a difference when they’re just acting foolish and immature.
by Iluvitar on May 4 2006, 6:29 pm #
My only problem aside from the obvious – SUVs?! Who needs ‘em?! – is that the ad is an old one! Least they could have made a unique ad that somehow was relevant to the context it is being shown under.
by sh!ma on May 5 2006, 1:11 am #
Is there a more ineffectual and lazy protest than booing an advert before a movie?
by ramanan on May 5 2006, 4:53 pm #