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Hyundai screws up big time with new ad

I guess Hyundai thought it was being clever, but their new ad blew up in their face big time. The ad depicts a man committing suicide in his ix35 Hyundai car, but ultimately failing because the car doesn't emit carbon monoxide but rather water vapor.


Now can you ever make a funny ad using suicide? Sure, anything can be made to be funny.  Bridgestone did such an ad years ago....



Bridgestone was smart though. First they used a dog. Second they kept it sort of light. Third, you cheered for the dog when the car stops.

Where Hyundai screwed up is the ad is too damn realistic. The viewer knows that there are people who commit suicide that way and the tone and ambiance of the commercial is probably what their last moments are actually like. When you create that sense of realism you can't then flip-the-script at the very end and expect people to find it funny.

As to be expected the ad upset some people who had actually lost their father to suicide in such a fashion.

Way to give your brand a black eye Hyundai.

Comments

  1. In the world of thermodynamics and mathematics, it is wasteful to do things that are by the laws of the universe physically impossible. You cannot:
    1.Divide by zero
    2.Know the absolute last digit of Pi
    3.Set either water or a school on fire
    4.Kill yourself
    8.Change unambiguous past history in the next few minutes.
    9.Cut a Mobius strip down the middle and have 2 Mobius strips.
    10.Destroy heat and cause it to cease to exist.

    I killed myself on November 12,2001 and I already have figured out what happens. Your life is replaced by a near-identical life in a different universe save for a more damaged body and your loved ones in the first life's universe mourn your death. When you cut the Mobius strip you only cut it back into one. When you die with a body that's still useable according to your deity you go on still living on an identical Earth in an identical universe. It's turtles all the way down. Pity those people who aren't religious who will end up, possibly moved off of the Earth once the Sun has ran out of fuel, in a universe all alone by themselves with everyone else who has ever lived (extraterrestrials too) now dead. Thus the problem isn't worrying about dying, but instead keeping the life entertaining. And if it's too boring there's no way out except through mythology/religion.

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