The origins of a TV commercial

Scene: Toytoyo Auto Corporation, head office executive boardroom, Tokyo Japan

Present:
Chairman: Dudley Warbucks
President: Akary Toydoyo
Executive Vice President: Macrame Nekktai
Executive Vice President: Screwge Makduk
Director of Innovation: Ernst Bloefeld
Director of Shizzle: Simian Scythe
Director of Plebe Manipulation: Hachiko Tigama

Toydoyo: Listen up, homies: I’m having some cash-flow concerns. I’ve only got sixteen swimming pools across 14 of my mansions. I need more and of course more staff to care for them. I’ve got mistresses in twenty eight different countries who all want a raise and higher credit card limits. All my private planes are more than five years old and need replaced and Satan has upped my monthly payments again. We need to invent some new consumer needs to fill and fast! What have you got for me?

Bloefeld: We ran out of believable ideas a long time ago!

Scythe: For the domestic market; yes, but not for the Western market. They’ll believe anything. They watch dum dum television all day and night.

Bloefeld: Ah, yes. For the western market; we have many ideas.

Toydoyo: Give me your best two!

Nekktai: We’ll choose the most believable.

Makduk: No. We’ll choose the most profitable!

Warbucks: We will make… the most profitable… the most believable.

All others: Ahhhh!

Warbucks: Won’t we, Tigama?

Tigama: Of course.

Bloefeld: (tapping his laptop keys) Okay. Here is the idea I like best: We appeal to their environmental sensibilities. We make a commercial telling them how driving from west to east is causing friction against the Earth’s spin, and how that friction causes heat which contributes to global warming!

Scythe: Are you crazy, Blofeld! Do you know how much money we’ve spent shutting people up about the global warming contribution from autos! You’ve come off your noodle, sir!

Bloefeld: But wait! We then introduce our new anti-earthspin friction condenser! It fights global warming!

Nekktai: Climate change. Not global warming. Climate change sounds less dire, and kind of fun.

Bloefeld: Of course. Of course. (taps a few more keys) We’ll option it on all models. Big money.

Makduk: It doesn’t sound believable at all.

Tigama: The Yankees will fall for it.

Scythe: Yes, and then the Canadians and Europeans will fall right in line. They copy the Yankees in everything now.

Toydoyo: What will this condenser equipment actually do?

Bloefeld: It will make the air conditioning work better. They’ll feel cooler which will ensure them they are fighting global warming!

Warbucks: I don’t know about this. The environmentalists are pretty smart. They might kick up a fuss about it; launch a campaign.

Nekktai: Our advertising budget is a hundred thousand times what theirs is.

Makduk: The greens are not so smart anyway. They think that recycling and windmills will save them.

Toydoyo: (looks confused) Well, won’t they?

All others: (stare at Toydoyo, aghast)

Toydoyo: (falls apart laughing)

All others: (fall apart laughing)

Scythe and Tigama: (fall off their chairs laughing and have to re-seat themselves)

Makduk: You had us going there!

Toydoyo: (wipes tears from his eyes) What else have you got, Bloefeld?

Bloefeld: Okay. I warn you: this one is even crazier. You ready?

Toydoyo: Go on.

Bloefeld: You know the camera we have on the back of some models? For backing up?

All present: (look around at each other and then start to giggle)

Warbucks: That’s one of my favorites!

Toydoya: Did we come up with that?”

Scythe: I wish.

Bloefeld: I think it was a Yankee. They put them behind their giant campers because they couldn’t see behind them and they’re too lazy to go look in person before getting into the driver seat.

Toydoyo: How did we convince them they needed a camera behind a Rav 4?

Tigama: Commercials that said the devil will steal your soul if you look in mirrors too much.

Warbucks: Excellent!

Bloefeld: Now we will tell them that one camera is not enough! We will put cameras all over! In every direction! And then turn the windshield into a solid widescreen TV instead!

Toydoyo: Genius! We can partner with Netflix.

Warbucks: Stop it! You people got that idea from the car in the Daybreakers movie!

Bloefeld: No! This is different!

Nekktai: Why would they want these cameras all over? How do we convince them?

Tigama: They’ll want them. Westerners are lazy. They hate the idea of having to turn their head to look at side mirrors or out windows. They find it unbearable!

Makduk: I don’t know. This may be too much, too soon.

Warbucks: Agreed. But what if we leave the windshield alone for now? And just add the 360 degrees camera system option?

Tigama: Make it 380 degrees. Sounds better.

Nekktai: Some of them will know there are only 360.

Scythe: A small minority.

Tigama: We tell them the Earthspin friction has caused a rift which accounts for twenty new degrees of direction.

Warbucks: No! We’re choosing one innovation here. Not integrating both.

Toydoyo: That’s right. So now we choose.

Makduk: The Earthspin story is far more sensible. The camera thing is strictly nuts.

Bloefeld: But the camera thing is more profitable.

Toydoyo: Then that is our answer. We need a commercial that will convince them they need the extra surveillance!

Scythe: Imagine this scenario: we have a married couple in a Rav 4. They’re backing up and almost hit a homeless person!

Warbucks: No homeless people! Don’t remind them of charity! We want them spending all their money on cars.

Scythe: An unwashed hippy, then?

Tigama: They call them hipsters now. And that won’t work. Our target market would just as soon run the hipster over. They don’t like hipsters.

Toydoyo: Why?

Tigama: They mistrust everyone who’s different. I guess they don’t understand why anyone should have different priorities. Plus they’re secretly resentful I think. They have a vague notion that the hipsters are kind of smart and more responsible; socially and environmentally, and they're afraid of looking selfish in comparison, I guess. I don't know.

Toydoyo: I don’t like it. Keep the hipsters out. No allusions to responsibility! I want them thinking about buying shit!

Scythe: How about a living shopping cart then? Or a robot shopping cart? One that will be their shopping agent and help them buy lots and lots of shit really efficiently! People would love that! But they wouldn’t want to back into one. It would scratch their paint. And every westerner knows that a pristine car finish means a pristine soul!

Toydoyo: I like it!

Warbucks: I love it!     

Tigama: Me too! And we’ll make it a nice red Rav 4. Red makes people hungry or angry! And angry hungry people want to buy more!