I used to see this spot on TV all the time, and I thought it had run its course; but no: I just saw it again today! This is the spot for Shell where some Japanese kid drives his parents crazy with his loud rock ‘n’ roll music, and his father flicks a switch on his wall outlet to turn his electricity off. Watch the commercial through the link below if you’re not familiar with it.
This is cute and all, but there’s a real problem with this ad. Can you tell what it might be? You’re probably right with me here, aren’t you? Okay, here’s the deal: the father has to lean into his son’s room to flick a switch that’s clearly visible on the wall outlet to kill the power. The kid looks at his guitar and stuff, looking confused about what killed the power, and that’s fine for the commercial; but in real life, it would take that kid about 30 seconds to figure out what’s happened, and he’d just flick the switch back on again and start playing like before.
Look, everybody knows that kids are a quick study and are really good at figuring out how things work: that’s why they’re so good with computers while old people are left in the dust with such things. Some older people even have their grandchildren open their “childproof” medicine bottles for them, because they’re too hard for seniors to figure out, much less open; but kids can figure them out in no time! That’s why many adults call them “adult-proof caps”. And the same is true with the simple electrical switch on the outlet in this commercial. It’s just silly to even think it would fool the kid for more than a minute. Let’s get serious here.
If they wanted this thing to actually work, they’d have to wire it into a control panel that gave the father access to switch off any outlet in the house from the parents’ bedroom. Apart from that, the father would just have to rely upon his authority to tell his kid what to do in order to limit his electrical use and volume level, just like any other parent. So the switch they show us in the ad might be nice in theory, but it wouldn’t work well in practice; at least, not like they’re showing us here. So it’s just misdirection and meaningless flash here in this ad, and that’s just a tad dishonest I think.
Or do they actually think this would work in real life like they show in this ad, and the kid would wonder his whole life why the guitar stopped working sometimes?
Here’s the headbanging spot:
