Ragu Hates Dads

I hate how companies, movies and society likes to pick on the dads of the world by portraying us as clueless parents who don't know our way around parenting. It is one of the main reasons I started Digital Dads and why I'm proud of Cast of Dads. As a marketer I've worked with companies big and small to advise them on how to properly use online media, how to reach out to influencers and how to be smart about content. After years of successful campaigns I know enough to be able to say what works and doesn't work.

Combine these two aspects of my life and you can understand why I'm so pissed at the stupidity of Ragu and whoever their agency is.

I've never interacted with Ragu on Twitter before and honestly don't buy their product. So when I got the above @ message from them linking to a video I wondered what it was. A quick look at their Twitter stream showed me that they had @ spammed a bunch of dads with a link to the same video. Here is the video:

As the person in my household who does all of the shopping and all of the cooking I took offense to this video. Implying that dads can only cook the simple things and Ragu is somehow going to help make that easier. Give me a break!

I'm sure there are plenty of couples out there where this might be true, but once again we have a brand who has decided to only focus on the mom side of the parenting equation and play into the stupid stereotypes that dads get pegged with all the time.

When will brands wake up to dads and the active role we play in our children's lives. I'm sick of seeing every company that wants to have a parenting focus completely forget about the male side of the equation. I long for a brand to embrace fathers and really step up and cover both sides of parenting.

Ragu, you failed. You tried to be clever and you blew it. Whoever your agency is that told you this was a good idea should be fired because they are doing things for you that snake oil salesman are selling companies on every day and you've written the check for it. You should have known better. They should have served you better.

I'm sure Ragu doesn't really hate dads, but after this video I can firmly say that there are plenty of dads who will hate Ragu. I certainly now do.

Update: If you are just reading this, I hope you'll read my follow up giving advice on how it could have been done better and then my final post after Ragu called me.