TVC: Hafslund – Pull out the plug
By Malay Desai From: Norway, created by TRY While munching in the kitchen, the wife asks the husband to pull out the coffee machine plug. On his hesitance, she asks ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ after which he obeys. The next morning, after waking up and spotting the unplugged chord, a bizarre chain of unfortunate events occurs to him, eventually landing him in a jungle with tribals. ‘The possibility of you ending up lost in the Amazon is.. 0.000001%’ whereas the rate of fire with chords plugged in is 40%, the voiceover says, before the Hafslund logo appears. Why we Like The possibility of a government owned power company investing in an expensively produced public service announcement AND one which has an absurd storyboard is 0.0001 per cent, and that’s reason enough to cheer this spot! Hafslund ASA, which runs Norway’s power grid, is its largest end-user electricity supplier. Now we won’t get into their history of domestic fires but it’s not an insensible thing to do for it to run an awareness message saying that by simply pulling off the chord of your electronic appliances when not in use, one can prevent a fire. That the message has been given so crazily is the surprise factor which has worked. The hilarious absurdity in our man’s day begins from the hook ‘what could possibly go wrong’ given right at the beginning. From missing his bus to being chased by a dog and cops to hiding in a box and being transported and air-dropped in a jungle, everything does go wrong and is produced incredibly well, with fast cuts and real locations. The final moments, slow pans of him wearing tribal attire amidst other tribals gives the film an extremely funny, twisted conclusion. But no madness in an ad is fruitful without a drive-home message and the voiceover toward the end of this spot does a fine job. By explaining with moving numbers the probability of this Amazon escapade happening versus a house fire occurring, it makes anyone laugh out loud. And once that’s achieved, the chances of you the viewer thinking of this funny man in the Amazon while next to your coffee maker are very high!
Such crazy narratives have been famously used by the French TV channel Canal+, while we can’t think of any brand back home which has done this, let alone in a public service assignment. But the next time you marketers are told by your agency about a ‘crazy’ story board they’ve come up with, keep this threshold in mind.
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