Last Updated on: 16th September 2020, 12:11 pm
No idea why I’ve never noticed them before, but this year I couldn’t help but take note of the Klomps Home & Garden commercials during our local news. I’m not much of a gardener so I’m sure that’s part of it, but I do tend to pick up on ad jingles and such fairly quickly so I’m not sure what took me so long here.
They have a cute little song at the end of each commercial, and for the longest time I had no idea what it was saying. Actually scratch that, because it’s not true. I had an idea, but it was wrong. Very obviously so. There’s no way that this nice little garden store is telling me to “have a bright bad day at Klomps Home & Garden,” but I was (and still am if I’m being honest) incapable of hearing it any other way.
The way I see it, three things are to blame for this:
- My ears, for hearing it wrong. Come on, stupids. That’s not what the nice lady is singing. Get in the game. But I’m going to cut them some slack here because they can’t be blamed for what they aren’t hearing. More on that in a second.
- My eyes, because they don’t work. If they did, I’m fairly confident that they would have passed the clue to my ears that the word they’re hearing isn’t “bad”, it’s “red”.
- The commercials themselves. Unlike the one I posted here, the ones on TV don’t use the word “red” outside of the song at the end. And since the song at the end is the very thing at issue, that’s not very helpful. And this is why I’m letting my ears off the hook to an extent. They are unable to determine that red is Klomps gimmick without being told so in English, which they were not until I Googled and the YouTube ad and some words read off a website by my screen reader made it pretty clear.
The lesson here, if there is one, is that blind people watch TV too. If you think something is important, please find a nonvisual way of working it in.
What if one day I happen to find myself in Klomps Home & Garden. Hey, it could happen. Maybe I’m buying a gift for someone. Anyway, I’m there, and somebody is having trouble. They just cannot find the perfect geraniums, try as they might.
“Who can help me!”, they cry out in desperation.
“I know,” I say confidently. “Look for a friendly looking person in a red shirt. All of the staff here wear red shirts.”
Were I not so sure of myself thanks to the knowledge helpfully imparted to me by a thoughtful advertising writer, what ever would that poor, lost searcher do? I’ll tell you what they wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t be finding geraniums. They might still have had a bright red day, but only because they would be seeing it.
When you listen to that commercial, where it says “trees and shrubs”, it kind of sounds like “treason shrubs.”
Great. Now all I can think about are hedges full of tiny microphones and spy cameras.
And while we’re busy picking this poor thing apart, “red shirt staff”? I’m hardly the biggest Star Trek guy, but am I the only one who hears that and wonders if their turnover is like super high because people keep dying in horrible gardening accidents?
I must take a moment to congratulate us on our massive influence. Less than a week after this was posted, a new Klomps commercial started airing and the fella doing the talking can’t say the word “red” enough. Good job, Klomps. And us. Can’t forget us.