Open Letter to Yoplait

Dear Yoplait,

I am writing this letter on behalf of myself and the rest of the people out there who are completely irritated by your attempt at marketing for the Tubes product. The commercial I am referring to is "Volcanoes," where 2 students are presenting to the class about volcanoes... but "cleverly" use it as a way to demonstrate the product. I perceive that the target audience is something around grades 6-9, but this is no excuse for the problems I see everytime that commercial comes on (which, might I add, is much too frequently).

The first problem I would like to address is the name of the flavours of the new product. "Fshhf Shhhh" and "Glupf Shglup" are not, in any way, a good idea for the name of a product/option. These names are very immature and do not make any sense. I am not forgetting about your audience, but I'm quite sure that no one over the age of 7 would find these amusing. I also do not understand the horrible use of the reverb/tunnel sound (other than the fact that the product is a "tube" and when you consume the product, you begin speaking through a tube apparently). It is intensly distracting and irritating, and very hard to understand.

Second - the X-ray. Okay, I may be getting technical on this, but I believe an advertiser should not lie (lying actually infringes on proper rhetorical communication by destroying the speakers ethos with the audience). Back to the point: the x-ray is wrong. The X-ray shows the bones and partial outline of the student's skin, then shows the Tube yogurt as he is supposedly swallowing it. The part of showing the skin is understandable to use given the target audience, as it feeds them the image that the advertiser wants. The yogurt swallowing image is incorrect on one major level. This is the fact that in the X-ray, you cannot see the human's bodily fluids, yet you see this yogurt. Also, The yogurt spreads out in a general volcano-type cone. When a person swallows something, it generally goes down the esophagus, then into the stomach. Even when the student pats his stomach in enjoyment, his hand is nowhere near wear the yogurt stops flowing into his body.

The third thing I would like to address is the image of the nerd of the class. This student is horribly stereotyped as having an encyclopedia open and browsing through it as the students present to the class. A good nerd would be taking notes and bring up abnormalities after they are done the presentation. In this case, he wouldn't even need an encyclopedia to tell him that such "volcanoes" do not exist, and that the pair's presentation is invalid. Being of a generally intelligent nature, I am mildly offended by the use of the sterotype in this situation. I am not completely offended in general, as I even find Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" song/video quite amusing.

I would like to conclude that unless these falacies are corrected, this commercial should not be aired. The invalidity of the students' presentation, the incorrect x-ray, and the horrible product names negate the effectiveness of this commercial. With proper corrections, this commercial may indeed be effective and allow Yoplait to increase its profits. Good luck.




***NOTE*** This "letter" is simply a way of complaining about the commercial in question and is meant to be comedic. ***NOTE***