Ryan Broderick: The Folgers Incest Commercial
Talk summary and resources created by Alex Turvy.
Talk Summary:
Released in 2009, the Folger's “Incest commercial” is a remake of a 1970s Folgers ad called “Peter Home for Christmas”
It features Matthew Allen and Katherine Combs as brother and sister who (to many viewers) appear to be on the verge of having sex.
The commercial has taken on a life of its own online in the years following its release, with 80 fanfic works and fan art on Archive of Our Own (a popular fanfic platform).
GQ did an oral history of the ad, in which the Folgers representative says “So it was purely brother and sister at the time. It was pretty surprising when people started talking about it because this is a brother-sister thing. They had fun with each other. I didn't see anything that would've indicated that it could have been interpreted the other way.”
In the same oral history, AV club declared that "we, not Folgers, are the real perverts"
In a funny bit of coincidence, Timothy Simons (aka Jonah from Veep) was the cameraman for auditions and callbacks – he said “ It’s not something I have a lot of memories about, outside of the fact that ultimately the commercial kind of seems like the brother and sister are going to have sex. That’s why we’re talking, right?”
Throughout the talk, Ryan stops at various points to highlight how horny each element of the commercial is.
Key Insights and Questions:
The internet's interpretation of the Folger's Incest commercial reveals the complex and often contested nature of authorship and creativity in online communities.
The Folgers Incest commercial and the internet's response to it illustrate the ways in which traditional power dynamics in advertising can be disrupted and challenged by audience interpretations and reactions that are enabled specifically by the affordances of social media platforms.
How does the internet's interpretation of the Folger's Incest commercial challenge traditional ideas of authorship and creativity?
How has the internet's interpretation of the Folger's Incest commercial influenced the way companies approach advertising and consider potential audience reactions?
Does our interpretation of the commercial change based on Folgers intention?
Is this commercial a way for Folgers to maintain plausible deniability but still draw on the well-known tendencies of Internet culture?
How does the internet's interpretation of the Folger's Incest commercial reflect the role of humor and satire in advertising and its potential to be perceived differently by different audiences?
Talk Notes & Related Resources:
“For a general audience…the use of sexual taboo and death taboo themes in ads produces a more negative brand attitude and triggers social normative pressure that reduces intention to purchase the advertised product.”
Taboo Advertising: Can Humor Help to Attract Attention and Enhance Recall?
“"Taboo advertising" is often seen as an effective way to attract attention and enhance recall. Drawing on arousal theory and the "taboo-superiority effect," this study questions the nature of the relationship between the level of tabooness and the achievement of those aims. Purpose-designed print advertisements manipulated levels of taboo and humor. Analysis of data collected from 180 respondents in France finds a curvilinear relationship, in which an optimum level of taboo-arousal achieves maximum attention and recall. It also finds that humor decreases perceived tabooness of objectively high-taboo advertisements.