Monday, August 18, 2014

MetLife Linus (Joke) Ad Campaign

(Linus may help shill for insurance, but he does not have a policy of his own yet. And so here we see how it comes to pass that he decides to get one.)

In this (joke) ad for MetLife, Linus wakes up to find his blanket is missing, and he gets a note (written in cut-out-of-newspapers letters glued onto a sheet of paper, as is the custom) from someone claiming to have stolen it for ransom. And then it ends up that MetLife stole his blanket, just trying to prove a point that Linus needs insurance for his most valuable possessions.

Then in the next ad in this campaign, Linus decides he needs insurance for his blanket, so he calls MetLife to get a policy. But the person on the other end of the phone has that muted horn voice all adults have in the Peanuts TV specials, and he can’t understand what they’re talking about; and the more he tries to understand, the more confusing it gets, with more and more muted horn voices overlapping and confusing him until Linus screams in frustration and hangs up, saying to himself: "Good Grief, insurance is more complicated than I thought!"

Then, in the last ad of the campaign, Linus really does lose his blanket, and he files a claim, but because he is going through withdrawal from his missing blanket, all the hoops he has to jump through to get his insurance claim processed drive him crazy, and he is committed to a sanitarium. And months later, just when he is beginning to get better, MetLife arrives with his replacement blanket; but because it isn't his original blanket, he has a breakdown and is committed for life, after which he escapes, becoming an ad spokesman for a mattress store.