I love this ad. Why, you ask? Well, it’s because when I was a kid, I went wild turkey hunting with a chain-smoking guide who coughed the whole way, so all we saw were completely empty woods for miles in all directions. (Not that I’m a big hunter anyway, but walking around for miles and hours for no reason starting at 4:00 am in the freezing cold kinda sucks, no matter how you feel about hunting.)
Oh, but I also love it because in college Animal Psychology class, our professor made us wake up at 3:00 am to go watch birds, but he was sick, so he coughed the whole time, and we didn’t see one single damned bird for six hours! (<In the freezing cold, after no sleep, and a full-day’s-worth of classes afterwards. Jerk.)
But I cannot let this wonderfully fun ad that resonates with me so well off the hook completely without mentioning but one trivial issue I have with it, which is: When the bird watching guide takes the Halls, she goes: “Caw! Caw! Caw!” Well, I think she should have made a more graceful-sounding bird call after that, because otherwise I think the slogan might well have been: “Halls: Because ‘Caw! Caw! Caw!’ is so much better than ‘Cough! Cough! Cough!’” Because really, isn’t that just as bad, if you’re a person listening to it? And there are so many beautiful bird calls they could have used.
Here’s the bird watching spot:
http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7fRM/halls-cough-drops-watching-of-the-birds
(I'm waiting for the next ad in this campaign, where this same woman is at the opera, and she has a cough, so she takes the Halls, and right after taking it, she screams: "Caw! Caw! Caw!" And so they throw her out, but on the way out the back door, she passes the star opera singer diva, who is coughing, and so she hands her some Halls, and it saves the show! {But they still throw her out anyway. If only she had made the pretty bird call, maybe she would have been allowed to stay.})
(I'm waiting for the next ad in this campaign, where this same woman is at the opera, and she has a cough, so she takes the Halls, and right after taking it, she screams: "Caw! Caw! Caw!" And so they throw her out, but on the way out the back door, she passes the star opera singer diva, who is coughing, and so she hands her some Halls, and it saves the show! {But they still throw her out anyway. If only she had made the pretty bird call, maybe she would have been allowed to stay.})
