JCPenney’s Father’s Day ad is rocking my world

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#Offbeat Families in the media#Offbeat Papas#gay family#holidays#LGBTQ

It’s like that you’ve already read about Todd Koch and Cooper Smith, the real-life dads in JCPenney’s Father’s Day ad… but if not, allow me to introduce you:

Photo via Joe My God.

The ad features real-life couple Todd Koch and Cooper Smith and their two kids and the text at the top reads:

First Pals: What makes Dad so cool? He’s the swim coach, tent maker, best friend, bike fixer and hug giver — all rolled into one. Or two.

All of a sudden I’m feeling like I need to mosey down to my local mall and peruse JCPenney for all that JCPenney offers. GRANTED, I would love to live in a world in which advertising like this isn’t a big deal because we’ve all evolved, but since we haven’t… this is fucking cool. HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, GUYS!

You can learn even more about these two online.

UPDATE 6/17/2012:

Huffington Post has a Father’s Day post from one of the two dads:

While we had no hesitation in doing the ad itself, we initially girded ourselves for a negative backlash against our family personally. To our surprise, the response has been overwhelmingly positive — shockingly positive, in fact! We’ve received hundreds of emails, Facebook posts, Twitter comments, and cards in the mail from everyone from long-lost friends and classmates to complete strangers in remote parts of the United States and beyond, each filled with heartfelt sentiments of support and acceptance. We’ve even heard from celebrities and other public figures. Sure, there have been some pretty hateful comments and notes, too, but they’re nothing we haven’t heard our whole lives, and, more importantly, they’ve been outnumbered at least 100 to 1 by the positive ones.

Read the full post.

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Comments on JCPenney’s Father’s Day ad is rocking my world

  4. I love that they’re doing this.
    I work in a jcp portrait studio (which isn’t actually owned by jcp) and have heard mostly pleasant things about this ad and the fact that Ellen Degeneres is their new spokesperson. However, I have heard of a few customers complaint. One even wanted to return their $230 order, not because they didn’t like the pictures, but because they found out after ordering that jcp supports the LGBT community. How sad that people still feel that way, and so adamantly. 🙁

  5. Yes!!!! I wish I had any desire to shop at JC Penney, because I love them for this. They had the ad with two moms for Mother’s Day and people flipped shit and complained so their response was an ad with two dads for Father’s Day, and that is awesome. It’s depressing that people would return their stuff and refuse to shop there because of it, but I’m glad my boys have TWO gay aunts in their lives so hopefully it’s never even a thing, it’s just normal life–as it should be!

  8. This reminds me of a recent car ad that features a nice twist at the end:

    I guess this won’t be broadcast in the US, but I love seeing it here in the Netherlands (even though we’ve had gay marriage for over ten years, so it shouldn’t be as big a deal as it still is).

  11. i love this.

    when they did two moms for their mother’s day add, everyone freaked out. and how did they react? they said, oh really? just wait til you see fathers day!!

    i love JCP for that, and not just because its the right thing to do, but what other time have you seen a company, after facing harsh criticism, say oh really- were gonna go one step better! that never happens. companies will back down, usually pull whatever is “offensive” and try to pretend it never happened.

    go JCP! im going to try to start shopping there more.

  13. I haven’t bought anything from JC Penny’s for years but it couldn’t hurt to browse throug hand see if there’s anything I might need…or want…or convince myself that I want…

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