The perfect commercial

Friday, January 12, 2007

There’s an Olive Garden commercial that I saw four times last night that got me thinking.  No, that commercial is not the perfect commercial.  That commercial sucks.  Although, I’m obviously not the target audience.  The commercial starts off with a woman coming into the Olive Garden saying she’s looking for her date.  She describes him as, “handsome, and his shoes are probably untied”.  At this point, off-screen a child calls, “Mom!”, and the mom and the hostess share a syrupy moment as it becomes obvious to all that the woman is having dinner with her husband and her son, and isn’t some divorced hussy on a blind date.

So, my idea starts off similarly.  It’s obviously a commercial for anti-bacterial kitchen wipes or healthy frozen dinners or something.  Just as we’re getting to the syrupy punchline moment, the director walks out yelling, “Cut!”.  The mom stops.

“This is the wrong commercial.  We shot for the female 35-55 demographic yesterday.  This is for the male 18-35!"  He says.

"Oh."  Says the mom.  She pauses for a moment.  "Okay.  Should I take off my shirt?”

“Yes, that would be great."  The director says.  "Someone get these kids out of here!"  He walks off screen and we see the mom start to pull her shirt over her head, and then the commercial cuts to the screen that shows the company name and website and whatnot.

The voice-over then comes on and says something like, "At blah-blah company, we know what our customers want.  And we work tirelessly to give it to you.”

This commercial has it all.  Syrup, humor, memorability, sex, self-referential “we joke about ourselves because we’re real people, just like you” stuff …  It’s perfect.  Someone needs to contact me about the rights to it.

Posted in: TV