The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on April 21st, 2008 in Uncategorized

I fully intend on writing a three-part post on my relationship with marketing. It will take at least that much to try and explain how I react to television commercials and product packaging and product placements and endorsements… In the meantime, however, I wanted to remind you of this commercial:

At first it appears to be just a simple Energizer Battery commercial - the uber-tenacious rabbit bangs his drum some more and provides some over the top amount of power the way only Energizer batteries can in real life. Supposedly. But then you realize that what actually happens in this commercial is the following:

First, a totally stereotypical spaceship crash lands on earth. We have to guess about the details of what happens next, but most likely some of the aliens go to look for redneck earthlings to test in various ways. While they’re out one of the aliens that stayed behind leaves the radio on (ironically you just can’t get Frank Zappa on Alpha Centuri) and the spaceship’s battery actually dies. To remedy the dead battery problem, they did what any of us would do: They attach jumper cables from their spaceship to the ears of a pink rabbit. This rabbit then bangs on a drum to produce enough energy (which fortunately gets transfered through the ears) to start the battery of the spaceship. Having power again (and presumably the aforementioned rural citizen), the spaceship flies way. But then the aliens actually change their mind and return to steal the rabbit and take it with them.

This has got to be the most ridiculous premise of all times. I can’t believe that there are actually people that sat around throwing out ideas and came up with this. What’s much more likely is that they wrote a bunch of ideas on balls and dropped them into a tank with manatees and let the manatees choose which elements they wanted to make up this commercial. Much like how the writers of Family Guy work.