Like a bajillion other Americans, last night my husband and I watched America’s Happy Time Sports Christmas, also known as Super Bowl XLIX. Commercials are, of course, half the event, and one of the multi-million-dollar spots has people talking, if we take “talking” to mean “completely eviscerating on account of its horrifying lack of sensitivity.” Yes, that commercial. Nationwide Insurance’s "Make Safe Happen." In it, a little boy envisions a life he never had because, well, he’s dead. Probably because of something his parents did wrong. As a new parent who constantly entertains masochistic visions of my child dying because of something I did, I have to say that I DID NOT LIKE THE NATIONWIDE COMMERCIAL. I do admit that at first I didn’t hate the ad, but I can’t emphasize enough that this is because I am—and I’m quoting my husband here—“totally crazy.” (See above reference to constant masochistic fantasies about death.) So my initial “seems reasonable” shrug was simply symptomatic of my baseline level of paranoia. I realized that Nationwide was going for shock value, and #MakeSafeHappen did trend on Twitter following the Super Bowl. The old adage “any press is good press” could certainly apply here, and hey, I want kids to be safe, so how could I oppose an ad with this message? Well, because it’s an ad. More specifically, a Super Bowl ad, and what bothers me is that I’m just not sure what exactly Nationwide is selling here. Literally. What are they selling?  This is an estimated $4.5 million ad paid for by a pretty big corporation; it’s not a PSA no matter how warm and fuzzy (read: cold and full of spikes) they’re trying to be with their safety-minded hashtag. They’re selling a product. After we finished watching the ad and sadly put down our bacon-wrapped jalapenos, as they’d turned to ash in our mouths, my husband said, “So…are they saying you should buy life insurance for your kid in case they die?” I said, “No, that can’t possibly be it…right? It must be…homeowners?” While Nationwide explained a few days ago in a press release for Make Safe Happen that this campaign really is about tools for parents to ensure the safety of their kids, that’s certainly not how it’s coming across with a good lot of people, if we’re going by articles titled “Congrats to the Nationwide Commercial for being the Debbie Downer of the Super Bowl” and “Worst Super Bowl ad ever? Nationwide's jarring dead-kid ad.” It appears that millions of viewers were offended at the idea that a company would use the idea of accidental child death as a means to sell, well, anything. The furor over the ad was so dominant after the game that Nationwide even issued a late-night statement after the backlash, clarifying that the “sole purpose of this message was to start a conversation, not sell insurance.” Well…maybe you could have clarified that in the commercial? Does there need to be a conversation about children dying from preventable accidents? Absolutely. Was this the way to start that conversation? I’m going to say no. If Nationwide’s motives are pure here, and they 100% are only thinking of the children, then it’s hard to see why they went this route. Insurance salesmen have always relied on the raw emotional appeal of fear to sell policies. I don’t know of a better time to appeal to emotion than when you have the attention of viewers who been drinking all day and are at a party surrounded by family and friends. As much as we acknowledge the silly circus that the Super Bowl can be, most people genuinely look forward to it as a bit of lighthearted fun. When, as Nationwide states, accidents are the leading cause of death for children, and this is the most-watched program in the world, imagine how many parents who’ve personally experienced this very loss were watching when this ad aired—Super Bowl ads don’t have trigger warnings. I’m not an advertising exec, but there had to have been a better way, and I’m not alone. This ad just felt like shock and fear masquerading as a message of caring.

I think @NationWide could have gotten that message across better with a HAPPY POWERFUL message and not death #makesafehappen with LIFE — Sandi Krakowski (@sandikrakowski) February 2, 2015

The thing is, nobody is arguing with Nationwide. Nobody wants a child to die if anything can be done about it. I’m pretty sure that everyone is pro-Keeping Children Alive. That’s why this ad felt like a guilt trip, and, again, it felt like an ad, despite Nationwide’s insistence that it absolutely was not an insurance commercial. Everybody knows that Super Bowl ad space is second-to-none when it comes to getting your message out, and Nationwide should have known that they didn’t need to make parents feel like garbage to do it.