In this commercial for Expedia, we see a young woman saying she is generally pretty conservative, and that she wouldn’t normally take a zip line through the jungle. And then we see the text: “find your courage”. Well, I must admit, this looks like fun and all, but the only thing this commercial makes me think of is the girl who took some abandoned zip line in the woods somewhere, got the flash-eating bacteria, and had to have her hands and feet amputated. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s really what I’m thinking of when I watch this spot (and I doubt I’m the only one thinking about this either). And so it makes me, rather than want to look for a vacation destination, worry about this young woman’s well-being. And I’m pretty sure that’s not what I’m supposed to be thinking about here, so maybe another vacation possibility would make a better ad for Expedia?
I don’t mean to be hard on this ad, you know, but that story about the girl on the zip line was really big news here. To me, this is akin to Expedia making an ad about surfing right after some surfer got eaten by a shark and was all over the news. It’s just that we’ll be thinking about that when we see the surfing vacation ad, and we might say: “Um, no thanks…” So how about another kind of vacation, like, say, skiing or snowboarding? What’s that? A bunch of them were just killed in an avalanche in Colorado? Oh, well, I guess the only safe vacation is to stay at home! (Oops, but then your house burns down. I guess it’s never really safe anywhere, huh? I guess you might as well go do whatever you want for your vacation: you’re going to die sometime and somehow anyway, so what’s the difference? Or maybe I’m just being a little bit too fatalistic?)
Here’s the zippy spot:
