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:
Crystal Head Vodka
The Promotion:
The Pitch:
We created totems designed to channel otherwordly forces we don’t understand … and we filled ’em with booze.
I’m not normally into reading about celebrities’ personal lives or behind-the-scenes antics (the one exception being anecdotes about Lawrence Tierney – those I can never get enough of). Nevertheless, over the years I couldn’t help passively absorbing certaun info – namely, that actor Dan Aykroyd is a bit nutty: an avid believer in occult phenomena, alien visitations, and their accompanying coverups, and with creative impulses that frequently run counter to common sense (Aykroyd’s original plans for Ghostbusters are the stuff of legends).
Given that, this commercial is about what I should have expected from the guy. Lots of other celebrities have launched their own brands of liquor – or, as Aykroyd puts it, “legal recreational consumables”. However, going by this ad, it feels less like Aykroyd had a passion for vodka, and more that Aykroyd wanted an excuse to talk about “higher power sources”, and found a way to do so while also turning a profit, piggybacking on the success of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
We’re over four minutes into the ad before Aykroyd actually starts talking about the vodka, and when they do, pretty much admits that Crystal Head Vodka was a gimmick in search of a product. Goes into the alleged history of the crystal head artifacts, and the effort put into recreating them with glass, and only then asks, “Now, what to put in a bottle laden with such symbology and iconographic value?” The answer, apparently, was vodka, because it is both “challenging” and has “joy associated with it”.
Given all this, it’s strangely fitting that, in searching for the full version of this ad, the only source I could find wasn’t a channel dedicated to old commercials, or spiritous beverages, or Dan Aykroyd’s career. No, it’s on a conspiracy theorist channel dedicated to exposing “secret Freemasons”, hosting the video so it can show people Aykroyd’s alleged Masonic rituals – there’s something delightfully full-circle about that.