This one is from Bose – they make headphones – and it stars Larry Fitzgerald ('Fitz'), a young man in nominal terms (mid-thirties) but an aging fossil in helmet football terms (mid-thirties). This ad opens with Fitz out for a walk on a nice day. When he comes across a chalk outline for hopscotch, he brings the game back to life by jumping right in. As the commercial wraps up, some little kid (with perhaps the same attention span as the Apple kid and maybe one-tenth the basic intelligence of whoever runs GE's marketing) sprints right at his kneecaps. Old Fitzy manages to evade this existential threat to his career with a nifty sidestep move before settling again into his walking pace. The whole idea of this commercial is to feel young, to really feel it, or whatever, and this is somehow related to ignoring the outside world via headphones.
Bose: feel young by ignoring everything.Still, despite the shaky connection of the product to the message, I really enjoyed the commercial. Maybe this is because the commercial is just really well done. One example of this is the symbolic balance in the commercial - it opens with Fitz looking through a window on an old woman exercising and it ends with two young kids looking out the window at Old Man Fitz 'exercising'. And that little piano tune in the background...
The main portion of the commercial reminded of some things I do when I go out on a run. When I zigzag my way through the crowds in Harvard Square, for instance, no one I dart around seems to realize that in my head I’m returning a punt against them (and for a touchdown, obviously). And if I spot something small and kickable on the path ahead, I try to line it up with a target of some kind (any kind of pole or post works pretty well for this). As I approach it, I’ll line up my stride like a soccer player and try to hit the target. I might get this chance two or three times per run – a small rock, a loose piece of ice, a discarded plastic bottle – and I’m always uplifted, just a little bit, on those rare occasions when I do hit my target and ‘score’.
There's no point to these little games I play in my own head, no point at all, except that they are fun. And isn't that the whole point? The journey is long and unpredictable and it could end at any point. Given those circumstances, it's always worth it, whether the bottle cap I kick hits the lamppost or not, to veer a couple of steps off the planned route and try something just because it seems like it might be fun. And if it seems fun, it will be, as long as you let yourself really feel it.
