Spoon-Fed Marketing

So here I am, sitting in front of the TV, and on comes a commercial that I've seen about a hundred times. It's for the "Big Dodge Ram Mega Cab", where these 4 huge, lumberjack kinda guys pile out of buddy's pickup at some little restaurant in the mountains because one of them just has to have pancakes. As they go inside, the camera pans to show a giant Paul Bunyan statue at the end of the parking lot, and ol' Paul's got his eye on that big truck.

You know which one I'm talking about now?

Well, after the voice-over is finished reciting all the specs of the truck and the legal mumbo jumbo involved in leasing the beast, the guys come out of the restaurant, only to find the truck missing. "Where's the truck?" one of them so-intelligently asks.

The commercial finishes with a shot of the truck driving away down the highway with a giant axe in the back. Ha ha... Clever marketing... The truck's even big enough for Paul Bunyan.

I noticed something different today, though. This time, when they showed Paul checking out the truck, they added a little "thought-voice" saying, "That sure is a big truck..."

It's not uncommon for ad agencies to change commercials a little bit, especially if market research shows that the audience isn't getting the point. So, I'm led to believe that there were enough people out there who were completely stumped by this one that they had to clarify it. I suppose some schmoe was sitting in his house thinking, "Hey... After those guys found their missing truck, why did they steal Paul Bunyan's axe? They'll never be able to swing that!"

You watch, we're gonna start seeing commercials with the director's commentary anytime now...