Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Progressive's Punted Plot Point



Wow, Jessika sure hates talking about exercise and weight loss, doesn't she?

Wait, this commercial ISN'T about weight loss?  It's about Progressive and it's continuing Let Us Spy On You device?  What the hell was the first five seconds about then?

I mean, we see Jessica's friend eagerly telling her about how good she feels about exercise- she just hasn't lost any weight yet.  Well, that's fine.  Exercise is only part of the equation, after all.  But it's an important part, and while I can understand why Jessica might not find this a particularly interesting topic of conversation, her inability to grasp what her friend is saying comes off more like "shut up" than "I don't know what you mean."

The rude brush-off results in Jessica throwing herself on to her friend's car- seriously, the first time I saw this, I looked to see if Jessica had a huge butcher knife in her hand.  Wow, great lesson learned here- if your friend wants to talk about her weight loss, pretend that you aren't interested- and then try to kill her.

Then, we are in another commercial- this one for car insurance.  The narrator tells us that Jessica is a "rate sucker."  Why?  What did Jessica do to suggest that she's a bad driver?  Show a lack of interest in someone's self-centered babbling?  How does this make her a bad driver?  If failing to pretend to show interest in someone else's This Is All About Me rant makes one a bad driver, I'd have been cancelled by every insurance company in the country long before now.

Seriously, what the hell is going on here?  What does the first five second of this ad have to do with the last ten?  Anybody?

2 comments:

  1. I agree -- assuming that the construct is valid -- that some people drive poorly and increase insurance rates for the rest of us -- where is it ever established that the woman plastered on the windshield is a bad driver and therefore a "rate sucker."

    Wouldn't the ad make more sense if the woman on the windshield was shown to be a bad driver? I mean, that's the entire concept of the ad -- bad driver equals higher rates.

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  2. You actually embedded a playlist of these ads, and by the third one, the "good driver" is shown driving for about five seconds despite the fact that rate suckers had completely obstructed his view of the road!

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