What do BlockBuster, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Expedia.com have in common? Their Super Bowl ads this year didn’t have captions. They must not want our business. Captionless ads have been bothering me ever since I began noticing how many advertisers don’t supply them, even after the first of the year when the FCC began requiring broadcasters to caption all their regular programming. The number of captionless ads on SuperBowl XL was especially disappointing. Now I’ve stumbled across some data to back up my gripe. It turns out that nearly 50 percent of this year’s Super-Bowl XL advertisers didn’t bother to provide captions with their ads, according to the accountability site Captions.Com, which notes: “A 30-second ad during the Super Bowl is 2.5 million dollars ($2,500,000.00). The cost to caption that ad is approximately $200.” So I’ve got a modest proposal. Why don’t we start a public hard-of-hearing-consumer boycott of the brands that don’t bother to offer captions? And let’s start favoring caption providers like Pepsi, FedEx, Sprint and VISA who apparently do want our business.
Because my day job is marketing communications consulting, I make it my business every year to watch the Super Bowl ads even more carefully than the game. But nearly half the ads are still inaccessible to me (hello ADA). Go to Capions.com and take a look at this year’s list. Among auto suppliers adveristing on the Super Bowl this year, Ford captioned its ad for the Escape Hybrid, but Honda, Hummer and GMC simply didn’t bother. Then there were the schizophrenic brands: Toyota captioned its ad for its monster Tacoma, but didn’t bother with its little Camry; Frito Lay Tostitos provided captions, but Frito Lay Potato Chips didn’t; Walt Disney World had three commercials, two with captions, and one without. What gives?
You can guess whose products I’m going to look at first next time I’m in the convenience store, at a fast-food drive-through, or cruising down the Auto Mile. More important, guess whose products I’m NOT going to consider? Let’s give the caption-less brands what they’re asking for — a hard-of-hearing-consumer boycott. Let’s visit the customer feedback sections on all the offenders’ sites to let them know just how offensive they have been. And while we’re at it, let’s also mount an email campaign to both the NFL and CBS petitioning them to require that Super-Bowl XLI advertisers in January 2007 include captions. No, there’s no law I know of (yet) that says advertisers must provide captions. But given the small cost, why on earth don’t they?