Unfortunate Timing

Had a nice chat yesterday with Jess Blackburn, a spokesperson for DELL computers. As it turns out, I was part of a very small group of people who either noticed or cared that the DELL commercials running the day after Christmas mentioned tsunamis.

"We produced the commercial three or four months ago and never could have anticipated that an actual tsunami would occur," said Blackburn who added, " we moved as quickly as we could to reach people at the networks to get it out of rotation."

As it turns out DELL isn’t the only company that had ads with a Tsunami connection.

Pepsi decided to pull its new ad . As dabitch explained in a post at AdLand

"A planned ad for Pepsi, with David Beckham, Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry among others has been delayed indefinitely following the the tsunamis in Asia. Teaser press releases about the ad sent out to Norwegian trade press the 21st of December with a reminder sent only a few hours before the real world tsunami happened contained images of the football heroes posing in front of a giant wave. "If we had a crystal ball we would never have sent out these images" said Lene Gjestad, Pepsi marketing Director in Norway to Verdens Gang. "The image was taken from the commercial which has a surfing theme, and was meant to be humorous, but looks frightening now after the disaster."

Then there is EBAY ad called "Toy Boat". It started running in November. I didn’t see it until a few days after the Tsunami. As I was watching it I was sure this was an ad for Tsunami disaster relief.

It wasn’t.

The ad ,which relies on visuals with no voice-over until the very end, begins with a young boy on the beach playing with the sand and a toy boat. The graphic says its 1972. His mom calls his name. He runs away from the ocean, leaving the toy boat behind.

The waves carry the boat out to sea. We see the boat riding massive waves and then sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Fast Forward to today. Fishermen on a different continent bring up the toy boat in their fishing net.

The young boy, now a grown man sees it on EBAY. Life is good.

What were they thinking? It was a wonderful ad BT (before –Tsunami) but they really needed to have better sense then showing a small child on a beach, with massive waves and a boat sinking AT ( after Tsunami).

It felt creepy.

EBAY needs to take a cue from Pepsi and DELL. For the near future, ads featuring the ocean and crashing waves just doesn’t send the right message.

The Tsunami is going to be this century’s Titanic. Just like it took a long time for the luxury cruise liners to overcome the Titanic disaster, its going to take the world a long time to look at the ocean in the same way it did before December 26th. For the time being, the ocean represents the tears of the world.

Many corporations are doing their part to support Tsunami Relief Campaigns. DELL computers is running a large banner ad on its website to encourage visitors to contribute to one of the agency’s providing Tsunami relief. Dell’s spokesperson Blackburn said that DELL is also running a matching campaign so that for every dollar an employee donates, DELL will match that contribution.

No mention of the Tsunami at either Pepsi or EBay's website.