Don't let the neighbors see.

One of the most annoying ads on TV right now really shouldn't bother me as much as it does. Culligan, the water cleaning outfit, shows all the members of the household doing things with water. With the images are tags in a passive aggressive font, pointing out that the things are using water: "___ Drinks". "Pets Drink" "Clothes Drink" "Skin Drinks" "Saltwater Taffy Drinks".

Grandpa Drinks.

All of this in a not-exactly-subtle way to indicate that water is vital to your household and by the way your local water supply is probably coming straight from the waste pipe of the Cow Manure Processing and Toxic Chemical Plant. Which is bull, and I don't mean the manure.

Here are the things that bother me so much about the ad:

1) America's water supply is excellent. The ad is clearly using what they think is a friendly means of saying "Water is important" and "You're going to get sick and die if you don't use Culligan." Well, maybe if you live in Flint, Michigan, but that's an out-and-out crisis. Our laws on water safety are pretty strict, and one area where we all agree the government has a legitimate purpose. The indication that we're all in peril because of our water is akin to vaccine panic. If you're really concerned about the safety of your water, you should be talking to the local government and the EPA, not Culligan.

2) "Drinks" is one of those words that really scrapes the nerves after a few repetitions. It's unpleasant in the way "moist" is unpleasant, but it gets a pass most of the time because, hey, it's five o'clock somewhere! Remove the convivial association and it becomes a clunker of a word.

3) Everyone in the fictional household looks like someone you'd cross the street to avoid.

I can't remember another ostensibly cheerful spot that got under my skin this way. The Lowe's "Never Stop Improving" ad of a few years back worried me a bit, because it made life look like a brief flash of light filled with nothing but home improvement work.

I suppose this will be a successful ad for Culligan. It inspires fear without looking like it intends to -- most people wouldn't say "They're trying to scare me!" which would be a turn-off, but it is intended to make you think "Gee, is my water safe?" Fear is a great motivator. We like to think we make decisions based on intellect, but usually it's emotion, with intellect supplying the data (or rationalizations) to support it after the fact.

Anyway, I'd be more worried about drunk ol' Grandpa (above) with a pot of boiling water, but that's me.

UPDATE: Mr. Philbin asks in a PM, What about people with well water? It's not an insignificant population, I agree, but from my experience people who use well water hardly need to be told to have a water softener like the Culligan equipment. One family I knew had a shower that smelled like rotten eggs because of the high sulfur content, at least until they installed a system. The Annoying Family in the commercial (I think of them as the Annoignos, an Italian name because Drunk Grandpa is cooking spaghetti) clearly live on a suburban block in a new house almost certainly serviced with municipal water.