This is the spot where progressively larger “dominos” fall
into each other to push over one last enormous domino, representing future financial
retirement needs.
This ad presents a great visual metaphor, but somehow I feel
like it could have been even better, by making the dominos look like money, or
bonds, or bills, to indicate the increasing monetary requirement retirement
necessitates.
But at the beginning of the spot, the spokesman stands in
front of the enormous domino at the end of the line, and all I could think of was
what would happen if someone tripped over the first, tiny domino, or the wind
blew it over. Then he’d be crushed to death under the retirement requirement
metaphor!
But had the spokesman been crushed under the last, giant domino, that would work for the message too, with a new spokesman walking on camera and
saying that if you’re not adequately prepared for retirement, you could get
crushed under your financial needs, just like the first spokesman was crushed
under the large domino representing them. (In fact, that might put an
exclamation point on the issue, showing how dire it can be if you are not
prepared for retirement. And they could claim that the first spokesman
realized he was not prepared, and he let the domino fall on him purposefully
rather than face an inadequate financial future in retirement.)
Here’s the crushing commercial:
