I think I must have ridiculed these ads before, but I just
saw another (new) one tonight. And it had been so long since the last one, too.
(I was hoping they had a better campaign concept by now.)
So this ad starts with some guy at a diner table with a
bunch of people, and he’s got a glass of orange juice in his hand, and then he
asks what all is going to go wrong today. So some tollbooth lady says he will
arrive at her tollbooth without any change (Doesn’t this give him fair warning
to go get some change? But I digress…), and then some other construction
worker-looking guy says a box of nails will fall from his truck and puncture
this guy’s tires. (I must add that these people give him exact times and
locations for these upcoming occurrences. So doesn’t this give him the
foresight to avoid them? Or is this, like in a Greek play, an example of how no
man can escape his fate? But I digress again…)
Now, at this point in the ad, the guy says: “Good thing I got my orange juice!” And then he drinks it. But it is at this exact point where I
begin to wonder a couple of pertinent things: 1.) If he didn’t drink the orange
juice, might he possess the intelligence and foresight to avoid these problems,
and 2.) Isn’t it just possible that it is, in fact, the drinking of the orange
juice that is causing all of this mayhem and bad karma? I’d think that this
exact ad campaign would be the perfect ad for another juice like V8 to add an
ending that says: “Drink V8 and avoid all of the bad luck drinking orange juice
will always bring you! Look at O.J. Simpson: He drank orange juice, and look
what happened to him! Such disasters never befall the imbibers of V8 juice!”
This is not the ad I just saw, but it’s from the same ad
campaign:
