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Scariest Ad of the Week

Agree with this ad, or else.

Leslie Savan

October 9, 2014

Every time I see this ad, or one of the ten others in its series, I start to shudder. It’s not just the Sturm-und-Drang music and the sheer weirdness of the script (“We are surrounded by a world that demands we submit, succumb, and believe in nothing…. the cowards who pretend they don’t notice the elderly man fall and who walk right past the little girl who’s way too young to be here alone, who raise the volume to silence the scream in the night”). It’s also creepy because you don’t find out until the very end what product it’s shilling. But here’s a hint: watching it, you might just feel like you have a gun pointed at your head. Agree, or else.

Michael Daly at the Daily Beast details why this multimillion-dollar ad campaign is “despicable.”

Leslie SavanLeslie Savan, author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers and The Sponsored Life, writes for The Nation about media and politics.


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