Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
THE SET — Commercials are made by companies every day to drive viewers into action.
Buy this fine-smelling product! Get this must-have service! Feel sad about sad pets and donate money! Ask your doctor about this medicine today (but don't take it if you're allergic to the medicine)! Call this number if you have a structured settlement — it's your money and you need it now!
Commercials exist because many of them work. But as you read the above, you may have thought about obnoxious commercials that annoy you to your core.
Now let's think about the commercials that are hard to hate. The ones that go viral. Those are the commercials that sell us on pure entertainment and jokes. Just think of the internet's best friend from the 2010s, dead-pan taxidermist Chuck Testa. Be honest, that commercial made you wish you had something that needed to be taxidermized.
The commercial featured in this article may not speak as deeply to your soul as Chuck Testa, but it's a great example of how a company can make fun of itself and its advertising practices to catch your attention.
The short ad shows a man in a fine suit in an office, looking poised and ready to tell us something. Instead of directly selling us on the services and transparency practices of Nordnet, a Scandinavian banking chain, he goes through the motions of a typical commercial and makes that process transparent instead.
OK, that was a dry, boring, and possibly confusing explanation. So you'll simply have to watch the commercial to see how delightful it is. It may just have to fake laughing as much as the two actors at the end of the commercial.
It's easy to hate commercials, but that doesn't mean you can't love them too.
