Deconstructing Flat Buns

Too frequently, the public takes the media way too seriously, which is exactly what media producers want the public to do.

It is a situation that calls for deconstruction. Let’s call it “Deconstructing Media.” By deconstructing media products, the public can get a picture of how the media does its work to inform, entertain and manipulate mass audiences. The public sorely needs educating in this subject – none of it is taught in K-12 – and I will make Deconstructing Media a regular feature in this blog.

The Carl’s Jr. television commercial for its “Flat Buns” hamburger is a good product with which to begin. Its release a couple of weeks ago created quite a stir, which was one of the goals of the producers.

Like all media products – information, entertainment, manipulation – this commercial was constructed by professionals using a set of media codes. The codes in play here are sex (very popular media code), conflict, proximity, demographics, and the television revenue formula.

The mission: get boys ages 10 to 18 (the demographic) to buy at least one of the new Carl’s Jr. Flat Buns Patty Melts. Like every patty melt before it, the Carl’s Jr. version is made on rye bread, which wouldn’t spark much interest in the 10-to-18 libido or palate. “Flat buns,” though, has a sex connection. First, the media producers wrote a rap song about flat buns (“Flatness makes a better rear, Stand sideways girl, you disappear”) that appealed musically, and maybe anatomically, to the demographic.

The company had success with the Flat Buns angle as a radio commercial, so they ordered a television version. The rap music would still work, but using flat buns as a visual hook might not. That, obviously, from their selection of the “schoolteacher” in the commercial, was the producers’ conclusion. She had round buns and a tight skirt. Blonde hair. About 25. Black patent pumps, five-inch heels. Danced on the desk. Like no schoolteacher you ever saw. Sex, when she was on-screen, was more important than flat buns; that connection was achieved by boys chalking round buns on the blackboard and then erasing them “flat.” It was pretty corny.

People who were upset said the woman “demeaned” teachers, and education, and the classroom. But she wasn’t a teacher. She was a professional entertainer and a good one. She was a model and a dancer and probably has played roles in Shakespeare. The two rapper boys weren’t really rapper boys; they were young actors, with years of hard study behind them to land such roles in a national commercial.

The people in the commercial were only acting, and their roles were written around sex, conflict (classroom setting, rap, sex) and emotional proximity to the demographic (“Don’t you wish our classrooms were like that?”), to get the demographic to identify, and want flat buns, too.

How many boys did identify, do you think? Census estimates at the end of 2006 show about 21 million boys in the 10-19 age group. It is never the intention of a media producer to capture the entire audience. In marketing, a response rate of 3 percent is most satisfactory, particularly in television marketing, which is an exercise in the power of small numbers. It also means that 97 percent of the boys did not respond, which is a good number to remember when you start worrying about the effect of the commercial on the future of civilization.

Enough people did worry, though, for the commercial to make news, which the media producers love, because it means more people know about the commercial, which almost always drives sales up. Making news is how Madonna made herself so famous.