You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Gillette razors

The Promotions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV8IfJky7Nc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJZRK7S8hqs

The Pitch:
These dudes seem sincere and relatable, right?

I’ve had plenty of bad things to say about plenty of commercials that plenty deserved the tonguetextlashing they got. But I’ve always tried to keep my snide remarks focused on the ad itself, not on the people who made it. Furthest I’ll usually go is suggesting someone involved in ad should have realized what a bad idea it was and put a stop to it.

But here? There’s no way to get around it: I think these two are just bad actors. Or at least, they’re actors giving a bad performance. Maybe they do fine in other stuff, but what they were going for here just wasn’t working.

What were they going for here, anyway? Based on the dialogue, it feels like maybe this was meant to be a somewhat naturalistic conversation, a father and son exchanging banter as they talk about this new razor. But their performances are the exact reverse opposite of naturalistic. They’re overplaying everything, especially the dad. Just the emphasis put into lines like “Game changer!” and “Gillette labs?”, or the weird intensity and finger-pointing for “A quick shave? Respect the process!” It’s all reeks of worrying no one will find this funny, so they hit anything even close to an amusing beat super-duper-extra-hard.

Like, if these were local commercials, I wouldn’t think anything of it. This’d be just the sort of acting talent I’d expect – probably on the upper end of what I’d expect, since they’re at least more engaging then the dull, reading-off-cue-cards performance a lot of local ad actors give. But Gillette is a major, international brand. Surely their casting process could turn up something better than this?