There are certain scenes that appear so reliably in television commercials that one begins to suspect they are not creative choices at all, but regulatory requirements.
Mud and the auto commercial
Take the automobile commercial.
No matter the vehicle—compact sedan, suburban SUV, or something marketed as “urban-adventure capable”—it must, at some point, be shown careening through mud. Not driving. Not commuting. Careening. The camera lingers on the tires as they hurl great arcs of wet earth into the air, as though the vehicle has been liberated from the burden of pavement and returned to its natural habitat.
One is left to wonder: who is this for? Who does it attract?
Is there a large, underserved population of Canadians who, on a Tuesday morning, find themselves navigating bogs on the way to a dental appointment? Is the fantasy that the car is practical but necessary in ways that don’t matter?
Life insurance and optimism
The life insurance commercial offers a different emotional landscape.
Here, we are invited into scenes of quiet domestic reflection, where individuals speak, often smiling, about their own funerals being fully paid for. The tone is reassuring. The music is gentle. The message is clear: death has been successfully managed.
There is something admirable about this optimism. Death, long regarded as a sombre affair, has been repositioned as a solvable administrative problem. One might even say a lifestyle choice.
It is not entirely clear, however, why the participants are so pleased at the thought of a paid funeral.
The drug television commercial
Pharmaceutical advertising occupies yet another register, one that might best be described as cheerful catastrophe. We are shown people gardening, cycling, and embracing loved ones while a voice—calm, almost soothing—lists a series of possible outcomes that would, in other contexts, be considered disqualifying.
“May cause dizziness, confusion, sudden loss of consciousness…”
The images do not change.
“…or in rare cases, death.”
At this point, the viewer is invited to “ask your doctor if this medication is right for you,” which raises a number of questions about the doctor’s role in this exchange. Is the doctor expected to weigh the benefits of symptom relief against the possibility of immediate existential collapse? And how often does the answer come back: yes, let’s proceed.
Charity
Charitable advertising, too, has its constants.
The children in the Kars for Kids campaign have been singing for what appears to be several decades. One assumes they have grown, matured, and perhaps taken on careers of their own—possibly even in advertising. And yet, they remain perpetually young, suspended in a musical appeal that has outlived multiple economic cycles.
They are less a group than an institution. And no matter how our tax system changes, you always get a maximum tax credit. Genius.
Emus and other wildlife
Then there is the matter of branding decisions that defy interpretation.
Why, for instance, does an insurance company require an emu?
The Liberty Mutual Emu appears alongside a human counterpart dressed in similar colours and style, neither explaining the other. The emu wears a tie and sports sun glasses. The emu does not speak – although it does squawk – which may be its most persuasive quality. It simply exists as though insurance itself has evolved to include wildlife.
One hesitates to ask what risk category it represents.
In the same genre, customers routinely express surprise that their life insurance quote is for an amount that is “less than I expected,” even as the narrator has just informed us that policies can reach considerable sums. The expectation, it seems, is always calibrated just high enough to allow for relief.
This is not pricing. It is emotional choreography.
Meals for people and pets
Restaurant advertising provides its own peculiar assurances.
We are told, with great emphasis, that the beef is grass-fed. This is presented as a revelation, as though cattle have only recently been introduced to grass, and are still adjusting to the concept. The consumer is expected to be impressed—not necessarily because they demanded this information, but because it has been offered.
Dog food commercials go further, inviting us to observe the dog eating.
This is presumably evidence of quality. The dog, having been presented with the food, consumes it. One might question what alternative outcome was considered plausible. Would the dog refuse? Would it pause, reflect, and request a different outcome?
Instead, we are shown the act itself, as though appetite were a form of endorsement.
Question not
What unites these scenes is not their content, but their confidence.
Each presents a small, self-contained world in which the underlying questions have already been resolved. Mud is desirable. Death is manageable. Side effects are incidental. Children do not age. Emus explain insurance. Prices are always better than feared. Grass is noteworthy. Dogs approve.
The viewer is not asked to believe these things.
Only to accept that, somewhere, they must make sense. And perhaps they do.
After all, if a car can conquer mud, a policy can outwit death, and an emu can sell insurance, then it follows that the rest of it—however unlikely—may also be true.
What is manufactured, ultimately, is not desire, but normalcy.
A world in which mud is relevant, death is manageable, risk is companionable, and emus are informative is not presented as extraordinary. It is presented as given. The viewer’s role is not to question it, but to inhabit it briefly, and then to carry some part of it forward.
Thirty seconds at a time.
And if, at the end of it, nothing quite adds up, that may be the most important lesson of all.