It’s not often that a commercial supports two distinct and divergent purposes so equally well. I won’t say more lest I ruin the video before you can watch it.
But you’ll understand what I mean after you watch.
The effectiveness of the commercial is predicated upon two storytelling strategies found in almost every great story ever told:
Contrast and surprise
Contrast is an incredibly economical and memorable way of describing and defining a person, object, or concept. Place two contrasting things side-by-side, and you’ve likely created a clear and indelible image in your audience’s mind.
Contrast can also effectively illustrate blindspots, misconceptions, and misunderstandings, as it does here. When done well, it can almost feel like a punch in the gut.
Courtroom scenes in movies like A Time to Kill do this especially well.
Surprise is the most delightful and memorable thing a storyteller can offer an audience. It’s the moment when the storyteller turns over a corner of the universe to expose something the audience could not conceive of moments before.
When performing onstage, there is nothing more glorious than the sound an audience makes when they are collectively, supremely surprised.
Surprise is also the thing that most storytellers fail to exploit, either in their inability to recognize moments of potential surprise or (more often) spoiling those moments through a multitude of tragically common, nonsensical decisions.
But when done well, as it’s done here in this commercial, the results can be quite extraordinary.
Sometimes, surprise can even make us rethink our view of the world entirely, as this commercial may do for some.
