Here we have TD Ameritrade making another ad where part of
it uses the same colored pencil animation style as in their previous commercial
about the so-called Mayan apocalypse. And so this made me wonder if they were
going to be somehow misleading or shoot themselves in the foot again, and I was
not disappointed, to say the least! Yes, it seems that TD Ameritrade made this
ad to look as though using their new software (or whatever it is) is somehow
akin to burglary: what a perfectly appropriate message for an investment firm
to want to communicate to the public, especially in light of all the fraud and
theft perpetrated by investment banks leading up to the financial crash! In
this ad, they make it look like using their investment products is just like
robbing someone’s house, and they even suggest the killing of a sleeping dog!
Hey, great analogy, guys!
So this spot begins by showing some guy with night vision
goggles and fuzzy bunny slippers on sneaking around someone else’s house at
night. (The bunny slippers are key here: if he gets caught, he can say he was
just sleepwalking! That’s what I always do. But his night vision goggles might
be a little harder to explain! {That’s why he needs a gun!}) Then, after
tip-toeing around the living room, and avoiding tripping over a skateboard,
while acting like a cute sleeping dog is an “enemy” to be “neutralized”, which
could only be true if the guy is burglarizing this home. Oh, but then they act
like it was just a fanciful exaggeration or something, and that he really just
wants to “target” stocks to trade, at which point the ad takes a visual and
storyline shift, making it looks as if it’s a story about cyber crime (!).
Yes, then this guy looks as if he’s Tron, breaking into someone’s computer, navigating the
maze of security features and firewalls, and skillfully breaking into this
computer, where he rides a pendulum (?) like Tarzan would ride a vine in the
jungle, while the announcer’s voice says TD Ameritrade’s new software will make
you into “a trading assassin” (!!). Now, I’m sure investment banking makes a
lot of people think about it as being a criminal enterprise, especially after
the huge financial crash nobody was ever charged for (criminally, that is: we
taxpayers were charged over a trillion dollars for it!), and that this makes
people angry and perhaps want to kill some of them, but is suggesting this type
of criminal activity, and using terminology like “assassin”, etc., really the
way they want to go here? I would seriously advise against it! (Because after
all, if they whip people up into a vindictive frenzy, the crowd just might
target them too.)
Now, I know what they’re thinking here: investing with their
online system is a super-cool, James Bond-ian experience, and they want to make
it look all neat-o and keen and whatnot. But this ad really makes TD Ameritrade
look more like they’re encouraging criminal activity, and like they’re engaged
in cyber crimes and banking fraud, and that makes them look more like Bond villains than benevolent secret agents. Is this really what
they want us to be thinking about? I wouldn’t have thought they’d want us to
think about this kind of thing, but that’s exactly what this commercial does:
it likens trading with them to a high-tech robbery and stealth cyber crime. And
I wouldn’t think that would attract many honest people to their business. (But
hey: maybe they’re branching out into hacking!) And under the circumstances of
the recent zeitgeist being for a mistrust of the investment banking
establishment, I would have to say that this commercial is about the worst
possible thing they could do right about now message-wise. (But hey: maybe
they’re trying to use reverse-psychology!)
Here’s this covert criminal conspiracy commercial:
