Sunday, July 18, 2021

AIG "Tackle the Risk" Commercial: Three Minutes of Bizarre

 


Ok first of all, this is a commercial aimed at Japanese investors from 2017.  I generally don't bother with ads written for a foreign audience- I know there are different social mores and expectations and what have you, so what seems absolutely crazy and maybe even inappropriate to an American might not even raise an eyebrow in other countries, but this one was too weird to pass up.

For two minutes, all we see is a bunch of scary athletes who seem determined to assault anyone who happens to be standing in their way as they run through the streets of Tokyo, including a pretty young woman who was just strolling down the street looking at her phone (normally, I wouldn't mind at all the idea of body-slamming smartphone zombies, but she's about one-third the size of the guy who barrels over her, and as I implied, she's awfully cute.)  They just keep blasting through people who are just trying to go about their day.  I think the poor, underpaid window washer who now has broken bones and a severe concussion because a 20-year old, 200 pound athlete decided that it was his duty to crash into him at 10 MPH (the commercial suggests he's going much faster, but I'm going to try to stay in the real world here) was supposed to be a special bit of comic relief because his washing rag is just stuck there to the window, like he was swept up into heaven in a "Left Behind" film.   It goes from being weird to jarring to exhausting by the halfway mark- I mean, we get it; the producer is really really proud of this concept, so he's going to beat it into us.  One or two people put into situations where they should be badly injured isn't good enough.  Let's do this at least half a dozen times.

(I did think it was funny when one guy jumps into the back of a car and there's a baby in a car seat there- and the guy doesn't tackle the baby.)

Near the halfway point of this three-minute marathon of pain, the entire team traps a young couple in their car and glares at them menacingly.  Are they going to all gang-tackle this couple now?  Are they going to murder them?  What the actual hell?

Then we see that none of the people who were brutally slammed to the ground are hurt at all- they are being helped to their feet by the guys who rendered them horizontal moments before (I guess it's moments, but considering all that we saw, it's fair to wonder if all those mugging victims just stayed on the ground- perhaps waiting for emergency medical services- for a very long time, wondering if they would become crippled if they dared move their spines.)  The situation is resolved with a smile- "It's fine that you ran over me and caused me to crack my skull on the sidewalk, you helped me back up after all so all good.  No apologies necessary."  I guess this is how countries with strict gun control laws deal with situations like this.  In America, everyone within a city block would hear cursing, and probably gunfire, while a hundred bystanders live-streamed the event on their phones and searched for the right emojis to add. 

So as I noted AIG is an investment service and this is all about staying "financially safe" with your money.  And so I must add that this commercial certainly didn't age very well; in a few weeks Japan hosts its delayed Olympics amid mass protests over COVID concerns, concerns which have convinced the Olympic Committee to ban spectators at the events.  As poorly as the United States has done in getting its population vaccinated against COVID, we've got it all over the Japanese, who are just about the very worst among Westernized nations in getting shots into arms.  And Japan doesn't have the excuse of having half it's population living in a far right fever dream of fake viruses, autism-and-homosexuality-causing vaccines invented by people who hate Trump, and people who would rather die than take the advice of The Libs and Big Government.   I bet they are just fine when it comes to keeping their money safe, though, especially with compelling, "hard-hitting" (sorry) ads like this to help educate them. 

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