There’s a new commercial for an Acura SUV based upon Gulliver’s Travels, the part where Gulliver is in Liliput, and he’s a giant compared to the people there. Well, I must say, this spot has some Gulliver-sized (or rather, Brobdingnag-sized) problems: so many, in fact, that I’d be writing the entire day to cover them all. And I can’t do that, so I’ll just list off the obvious big ones, and leave it at that.
Okay, first of all, I will admit this spot is cute and well-intentioned, but it essentially advocates for abduction and unlawful imprisonment, and that reflects rather poorly on Acura. I know it’s a joke scenario, but the undercurrent of it is basically that it’s fine to kidnap someone and hold them against their will, so long as you give them a present once in a while. I wouldn’t want to associate my brand with such an idea, even in jest. But hey: maybe this ad is aimed at the bondage crowd, who supposedly enjoy being tied up, and perhaps this commercial will make these people feel aroused, and then they’ll associate that pleasurable feeling with Acura. (But this is kind of a stretch.)
Next, there is the issue of the intelligence of this gift. These people don’t want Gulliver to leave, but then they provide him with a means of escape that’s big enough to crush them all? That seems kinda dumb to me. Plus, do they have gas stations in Liliput with nozzles large enough to fuel up this car? SUVs are notorious gas-guzzlers, despite the claim that this one is “nimble and compact”. So once it runs out of gas, it’s just going to be a small seating area that doesn’t start or run anymore, and it might start to feel like a prison. But maybe this is by design? Could it be that these miniature people are trying to scam Gulliver into promising to stay with them using this car as a bribe, but that it won’t work without gasoline anyway, so Gulliver will give his word and just get a dead car in return, and then he’ll live in it so they’ll always know where he is? And if so, then wouldn’t he get mad and attack them like Godzilla and raze their villages to the ground in a scorched-Earth revenge? (If they were going to give him a car, it should have been a Nissan Leaf, and they should have presented it with a solar battery charger, so he could actually use the car; plus with an electric car, he’d never need servicing or oil changes, so this commercial, assuming this giving Gulliver a car idea was a good idea to begin with {which it’s not}, would work far better as an ad for a Nissan Leaf than it would for a gas-guzzling SUV.)
(I’d think they would have brought a Smart Car, since it’s smaller than an SUV, and they could transport it much more easily, but whatever. And they could still all fit in it with him. But then someone could criticize the ad by saying: “Only people as small as these miniature people from Gulliver’s Travels could actually appreciate the tiny, cramped Smart Car!” But hey: Actually, to make him think about “freedom”, and to feel like he was being given his freedom in such a way that he might still want to stay anyway, maybe they should have brought him a Harley Davidson motorcycle! Then perhaps the “freedom of the open road” would have been enough once in a while, and he wouldn’t have minded captivity with all the “small-minded” people around him: that would have worked nicely! In fact, then they could have said that “whenever the little people get you down”, just jump on a Harley, and it will cure you {!}. Wouldn’t that have been great? And that way the kidnapping/being-tied-up-by-miniature-people part would work wonderfully for the message of the ad: it’s a metaphor for the daily grind! {People say stuff like: “I’m all tied up at the moment” all the time when they’re busy at work.} And to get rid of all the possible problem issues I’m raising here, simply have the guy tied down begin to day dream about riding the Harley once he sees it, and then he wakes up in bed: it was all a dream! But then, rather than being relieved it was just a dream, he says: “Hey, where’s my Harley?” And his groggy wife says: “What are you talking about? Go back to sleep!” {BTW, the gasoline issue I mentioned above would obviously be a potential problem with the Harley Davidson ad too, but if this spot were for the Harley Davidson motorcycle, and it was constructed as I’ve laid out here, I think it would work so well in this context, I doubt many people would think of the fuel issue initially. Plus, if it was a dream, it doesn’t matter: with dream logic, it doesn’t all have to make sense.})
Then there is this question I couldn’t help but pose to myself the first time I watched this commercial: If the miniature people in Liliput have the ability to buy and transport an SUV to their island, then don’t they have the ability to get another normal human being to stay with them, perhaps someone who would actually want to stay, so it wouldn’t be, you know, kidnapping and forced captivity? (This is why I say it looks like this spot seems to support abduction.) All they’d have to do is place an ad for someone to come stay with them, and I’m sure some anthropologist would be more than happy to go study them for a while. Then, when that person wanted to leave, they could probably get another to come for scientific study, etc. Or maybe they’re tired of science nerds studying them like they’re some bacteria in a Petrie dish: who knows?
But assuming this scenario of giving a gift to some person you’ve tied up in the hopes that they would acquiesce into staying was a good idea for an ad for a product, then it seems to me the much better product to use would be a handheld video game device. After all, this would keep the abductee entertained at least, and in a place like Liliput, where they have no TV or movies, they could watch the guy play the games for entertainment like a movie or a sporting event, depending on the game. And if they also got a solar-powered battery-charger, it would (hopefully) always work, and everyone would be well served by this bequest. Plus, he couldn’t use the gift to escape! (But it’s still kidnapping!)
Here’s the captive commercial:
