Saturday, December 17, 2016

Duracell Star Wars Hospital Ad

Here we have a cute scenario where kids get Star Wars toys for Christmas, and then their imagination kicks in as the toys become real and they find themselves on a mission to deliver an R2 unit to the Princess.

But then the kids get chased by Stormtroopers because they chose to go to the hospital via the Death Star. Why didn’t they just go another route? They lead the Stormtroopers right to the rebel base! And they don’t even leave the girl a blaster or a light saber after they drop off the R2 unit with its secret files or whatever! The Stromtroopers might kill her after they leave! And the rebellion will be crushed in one swift stroke! The Force forbid!

But this scenario is humanitarian in that the injured Stormtroopers are at least already near a hospital so they can get medical attention quickly. But, oops: the hospital is the rebel base! All the injured Stormtroopers have to do is radio ahead to the Empire and massacre everyone! Oh, no!

Oh well, I’m sure the kids meant well when they made it possible for the Empire to find the rebel base so easily.

This ad is basically using the same strategy all Star Wars ads I see use (basically acting like the product zaps you into the movie, and without any reason for wanting to buy the specific product advertised), except this one doesn’t crib shots from the movie(s), and it also has a sweet message of delivering a toy to a sick girl in a hospital. I like it, but it would be nice to see why we’d want to buy Duracell batteries as opposed to, let’s say Energizer batteries.

Here’s the battery battle bit:


I think the ad might be better if it showed why we’d want Duracell instead of another battery. I did one like this recently for Energizer where two swear off in a light saber fight, and one light saber just cuts through the other one’s blade, and then the winner cuts open the loser’s light saber to show a lesser brand of batteries in it.

So in this one, I think it might be fun to show the kids chased by the Stormtroopers, who have better blasters until the kids replace their batteries with Duracell, and then all of a sudden their blasters are better than the Stormtroopers’ blasters, and the kids drive them off with a show of force.

Or show the kids in a firefight with the Stormtroopers, but then the Stormtroopers’ batteries die, and their blaster stop working, so they run away. And this while the kids say they must not be using Duracell batteries.

I think that would be a better strategy for selling batteries than just the fantasy thing, especially when you consider that it’s most likely the parents who will be buying the batteries, and Duracells are expensive, so they might want to know why they should buy Duracell as opposed to another brand.

Here’s my light saber ad for Energizer from last year: