Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

OK, now that I’ve seen where Snickers has taken this, I’m not so inclined to laugh it off. When I first saw the ad, I just thought of it as an extension of those Dodge commercials where this yokel is engaging in idol-worship of some manly man with a big Dodge truck, and has buddy-road-trip fantasies that involve a hot-tub experience (with girls, though), but ends with an overextended adoring gaze.  Or, actually, as a send-up of ritual homophobia.
It seems like the Snickers people have engaged in something more mean-spirited, though:

The Snickers Web site also showed video of players from the Super Bowl teams reacting to the kiss.

and the ration they’re getting about it is well-deserved.

The whole episode probably won’t have any effect on Snickers as a product unless it’s really the start of a campaign to Snicker at various segments of the population such as the mentally ill, the homeless, Alzheimer’s sufferers and people dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

And how disturbing can it be as an indication of how marketers view the marketed-to? From PT Barnum forward, advertising has never resembled an acceptance letter from Harvard in terms of flattering the intellect.