Carlos Veron | This Is Wholesome / 2014 [commercial advertisement]

how happy families look

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nathan Lennon (copywriter), Carlos Veron (of the Droga5 Agency) (director) This Is Wholesome / 2014 [31 seconds] [commercial advertisement]

 

The Honey Maid ad This Is Wholesome is probably the first of the three ads, given its short length.

    This ad features both gay fathers with their baby, one of the men feeding the child with a milk bottle and the other kissing the child, after which walk with their older son and the baby in a stroller.

      An instant later, we hear a female child’s laughter as her heavily-tattooed father pops a cracker into his mouth. A moment later, a mother is dancing with her daughter as the father plays drums. The frame switches to what appears to be a Hispanic single father buttoning up his son’s shirt. The next image of what looks to be a mixed racial married couple lifting up their daughter between them, as their two other children walk in front.   

 

      A narrator speaks over the images: “No matter how things change what makes us wholesome never will. Honey maid. Everyday wholesome snacks for every wholesome family.

      Since Nathan Lennon and Carlos Veron were credited with this commercial as copywriter and director, I am presuming (perhaps mistakenly) that they also served in that capacity for the other two.

 

Los Angeles, September 18, 2024

Reprinted in My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).