Aviva complains in this commercial that life insurance companies always just assign people with a number, rather than getting to know you as a person. Well, maybe they think that’s a problem, but I’d rather just get a number, so long as they actually pay off on the policy if they’re required to do so (which, since it’s life insurance, I’d probably never know about anyway, so who cares?). And that’s because I’m constantly being hassled by insurance companies trying to come over and hang out at my house. They always say they’re just there to try to get to know me as a person, but they’re always just using my computer to look at porn, playing with my stereo, playing video games on my home entertainment system, and eating all my food and drinking all my booze! And they always call and show up at the worst possible times, too! I’ve had to just stop answering the door and the phone after awhile, since it was always some life insurance company wanting to come over and hang out. You just never get rid of them once you let them into your life! So after all that, I find it refreshing to finally get the impersonal touch of being assigned a number and being left alone! (Yay, privacy! It seems we never get any from businesses marketing to us anymore!)
But I like the flat paper people in this spot, though. It’s an image that follows you in your thoughts later on, and it works well with the idea of people just being ‘information’ or ‘a number’. I’ve seen this idea used in movies, too, like In the Mouth of Madness, and the Masters of Horror episode: Valerie on the Stairs, but it’s well used for a new purpose here. (Maybe they could make a slasher movie about these paper people where the killer uses a pair of scissors to cut everyone to ribbons!)
Here’s the personally propagandizing paper people ad:
