This ad is really fun. I love the cardboard muscle car and the kids as pistons and wheels (They ought to make school plays like this for real to get deadbeat dads to show up once in a while for their kids’ childhood.), but there’s a small problem here. Can you guess what it might be?
Yes, it’s the old ploy of making people look like assholes who buy the product/use the service in the ad. Yep, that and the ploy of making it look like a punishment to own the product they’re trying to sell hurt more good advertising intentions than anything else I can think of off-hand. Oh well: maybe they’re secretly trying to make us save money in this down economy so our kids will have a place to live and food to eat, rather than encouraging us to waste money on selfish desires and unnecessary expenses. (But I doubt it.)
This spot is so cute, though! If only the father hadn’t stood up like a jerk in the middle of the school play to ruin it for everyone else (and embarrass his kids)! It just makes eBay users look like selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed assholes. But if he had seen the stuff in the play, bought the stuff on his iPhone, and then just told his wife at the end of the play: “I should come to these things more often! I guess you never know what you’ll get out of it!” (And he smiles to himself, with wheels in his eyes.) Then it would have kept him from looking like a jerk, and we would have gotten the message. Oh, and eBay wouldn’t look like it makes people act like uncouth selfish jackasses.
Here’s the muscle car montage:
