Beautiful ad, but then the announcer says that with the
safety shield technology, the only thing left to fear is your imagination. Um,
really? This car can prevent drunk drivers from driving through red lights and
hitting you? And it can keep big trucks from backing up into your car? I doubt
it. But it’s a very cute ad. It’s a shame they fumble the message with the
extremely exaggerated claim at the end. But I guess we all expect that anyway, and
in any case, the imaginative imagery is so beautifully realized, so it’s easy
to forgive the usual hyperbole this time.
I can’t help wondering, however, in the slowed-down
perception of time that occurs just before a car accident, how many drivers
will think to themselves that they were told they only had to fear imaginary
threats due to the safety shield, and what CGI animated imagined imagery
they’ll see in their mind’s eye, in that split second one realizes an accident
is imminent just before it occurs and the airbag deployment hits them so hard
in the face that it is all immediately erased in lieu of wondering how badly
they’re injured and how bad the damage to their car is, and oh yes, wondering
if anyone in the other car is hurt, and how much their auto insurance premiums
will be increasing.
Here’s the imaginative child’s car commercial:
One of the reasons I think I like this ad so much is that I
remember the first night I went to sleep with the lights off as a small child.
I was scared of the dark, so I always slept with the lights on until I was
maybe five years old, and that first night with the lights off there was a
shaft of light coming through my bedroom door from the light in the hallway,
which was always on when my sister and I were little kids, and around the edges
of that shaft of light, I literally saw the animated silhouettes of demons and
monsters coming from the dark and rising up against the light, and it scared
the hell out of me. So I pulled the sheets up over my head and ran my flannel
pajamas across my sheets, which always produced little static electricity
lightning, and then I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke the next day, the
monsters had not gotten me, and I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore. In fact, I
grew to like it very much, and have loved those old classic horror movies and
ghost stories ever since. And this commercial brings that childhood fear
imagination thing back to me, and that’s not easily accomplished as deftly as
it’s done here, so kudos to these guys.
