That puts their treatment of employees who join/are in the military far above their treatment of employees who are not; Wal-Mart employees know that they will be fired for ‘an unrelated reason’ if they make certain complaints (FLSA, OSHA, misconduct by a manager, customer safety)

This commercial doesn’t bother me any more/less than other commercials of the same type, and less than a different one that I’ve seen recently. There is a Kay Jeweler’s commercial floating around this year where a deployed service-member sends his wife a diamond necklace. The Kay’s one bothers me more because they ARE hocking their goods based upon the emotional sentiment one associates with military service-members, it feels somewhat exploitative almost. I do know other milspouses who disagree with me and like the ad (it worked for them, apparently)… but something about it irks me.

The Walmart one bothers me less because it feels like more of an acknowledgement or “thank you” and shows a kind, selfless act.

(Though I only know about the snow over there b/c my cousin at one point was deployed with the 10th mountain division. At the time, my reaction was, “skis? desert?” until he set me straight.)

I think that because it’s an emotional kind of commercial, it automatically will NOT resonate with anyone who already has antipathy towards Wal-Mart. I think that includes many readers of this blog. But for people who like Wal-Mart and who support the troops, we appreciate that both serve the same Americans whether or not their family members are serving abroad, and we get a non-rational emotional pleasure watching this commercial.

So not only does this say something interesting about Walmart, it also says something interesting about the Americans at home who are watching it: namely, they don’t know what the hell it’s like over there. (And I shouldn’t exempt myself; I had to Google to see if it snows in Iraq and to see how much of Afghanistan is mountainous).

For the last several years, I’ve lived in a non-snowy region, and I don’t miss the snow at all. It’s just not a special thing to me. It means hassle and danger. I wonder how well these commercials play in the Midwest and Northeast, where snow is more common than, say, Hollywood where they’re conceived.

I also do not know what Wal-Mart does or doesn’t do to support troops and their causes. It seems to me, though, that if they really wanted us to know they could have cut out about 10 seconds of schmaltz and mentioned it in this ad.

Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to go into detail on your position.

The real difference is there is no difference. Wal-mart is a company that in itself, we do not know if they financially donate to the troops or charities that have anything to do with the military. I’ve never seen this type of analysis. Wal-mart wanted to make a sappy commercial barely having anything to do with its stores but some feel-good theme about soldiers, and that’s all they have to say. They bought the time, they can say whatever they want to.

It might be unusual if I had never seen anything like it, but of course, my recall is out, so I can’t really name other ads I’ve seen that are like this. I’m not sure why we’re analyzing how little the ad has to do with Wal-mart as if that’s unusual, but I do like to analyze ads on their other merits or lack of merit. I didn’t think “ash” because the soldier felt it before he looked to see that snow was falling. Snowflakes are cold and wet. I don’t know if any airborne chemical weapons are also cold and wet, but I do have a personal failure to just take things as they appear and just go along with the story when things are amiss.

I found the ad unsettling because everyone came out from the tents and stopped paying attention to whatever they were doing. Maybe it was downtime, but it didn’t look like where they would be if they were on a break. It reminded me of the ruining scene from Saving Private Ryan that destroyed the whole rest of the movie for me – in one of the first battles, a soldier with a helmet on gets dinged by a bullet to the head, but is saved by his helmet. Then, he takes his helmet off to admire it, and meanwhile another bullet to his bare head takes his life.

Maybe the average Wal-mart shopper says, why be a downer, that commercial was nice. I can’t help but notice how distracted they were by snow. Snow is a hassle, it’s not a magically Christmas thing. I don’t know the powerfully emotional feelings of a typical US military stationed in the desert, living a life of courage, danger, and missing the comforts of Western civilization, stores like Wal-mart where you don’t have to think too hard to save some money, but I tend to think they’d say, huh, snow, and get back to their job, like, saving their own and each other’s lives. Unless someone’s never seen snow before, or perhaps that it’s unusual at that latitude, I think it would signal a maneuver, not some daydreamy duh, snow.

But anyway, I have no complaint with Wal-mart’s essential tactic to spend their ad money on an ad saying we love the troops and our freedom instead of making an ad about how they dropped the prices on detergent, coffee makers, and light bulbs. I would even think the same if I hated the troops (I don’t, though), this is nothing but an ordinary ad. Ordinary in theme and lack of relevance to the product/service/store, but still high in barf and disturbing ignorance of logic.

As a moot element why would we shop at a walmart when we have Px’s that proudly sell more “American Products, made in USA?”

Todays warriors with just military training walk into top gs or contracting corportation assets at gs 9, to gs 13 jobs..simply because they are valued, educated and trained or V.E.T. and the loyality index is far more predictable than any non-vet counterpart in the hiring structures.

Heres a recent sampling..US is now 25th in college completation where in the late 80’s USA was number one. Today stats reflect with 60 % HS youth going to college 30% to a trade enviornment 9 % still undecided and only 1 % take the oaths to defend the rights of free speech…1 % percent volunteer..and then come home and become a civic-engagement volunteer http://www.missioncontinues.org as one example. But thank you for your comments, I will share it with my vet buddy group as we all need a proper laugh to offset the PTSD and stigmas direction most 60 % educated folkes have about us dummy’s. vr/jim

Then I got a movie flash-back to a snow storm in the ME desert, where the story line from stigma the movie, desert sceen… around 1:60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhlB9XK9CQA&feature=related

so a sign of the times…no work at a decent rate for the troops still prevails and may get better when it snows in hell.. vr j :)

Plus, like the poster below says, assuming it’s snow, now the troops have to make all sorts of adjustments to their living quarters and equipment to deal with the presence of small ice crystals falling from the desert sky. I’m being completely serious, this commercial really bugged me. It failed to set up adequate suspension of disbelief that would allow one to ignore the pragmatic considerations.