This ad isn’t bad in theory, but it has a slight problem. In this spot, Shaquille O’Neil says that when he gets pain, he applies Icy Hot, and it beats the pain, saying: “Shaq 1, Pain 0”. But as Shaq is a basketball star, this score suggests that Shaq must have scored on a free throw, which we all know is relatively unlikely. What they should have done was show Shaq apply the Icy Hot and then go do a massive dunk, and then turn to the camera and say: “Shaq 2, Pain 0”. That would have dealt with this issue of Shaq beating pain in a way that made perfect sense with basketball, and did not remind us of the issue with free throw accuracy. (They did ads where Shaq dunks a couple of years ago, so perhaps they prefer not to repeat themselves?)
When you think about it, when a company gets a sports hero like Shaq to make an ad for a product that uses a score scenario like this, shouldn’t it be a score that makes sense within the game? Like, for instance, if they got Tom Brady to make a similar ad, it wouldn’t make as much sense for him to say: “Tom 1, Pain 0”, because 1-0 is not a football score. He should instead say: “Tom 7, Pain 0”, right?
(I can’t seem to find this particular as online at the moment. There are lots of others, but this one is the one I’ve been seeing on TV lately.)
