M-Ad Mondays

I'd like to dedicate some of my posting to reacting to various commercials and advertisement campaigns. Up for today is a series of commercials from Virgin America. There's this video where as a result of the supposedly good music offered aboard a Virgin flight this guy can't help but dance in his seat.

First of all, the other passengers don't seem at all bothered by this as much as they should be. Even the guy in the same row as him is only a little surprised. It's too close to one my least favorite airplane situations: drunken revelers. If I'm flying into Atlantic City or Las Vegas? Fine. If I'm flying on a Monday morning across country? No thanks.

Second of all, this flight is crazy empty. I'm not sure there's a single aisle seat being taken. There's an empty seat next to him (otherwise there wouldn't be enough room for him to dance without punching his neighbor), an empty seat in front of him, an empty seat kitty corner from him, and in another shot you can see the next two seats in his row are empty. Crazy! Hey Virgin, if you advertised that you didn't fill all your flights to the last cramped sardine sitting? That might actually sell some tickets.

Then for their next idea, they're trying to advertise what they call their "moonlight" in this ad.

It's pretty clear the couple has just met and she's about to give him her phone number. Yes because right after drunk people on the plane other random people hitting on one another and trying to get lucky is also really awesome. So anyways, she's about to give him her number when she drops her phone. He flips on the light to pick it up and under full light looks pretty different.

After she gets her phone back, she mentions they should turn the light off again. He goes back to normal and they are talking again. Okay, so it's sort of the typical nerd man (that's an inhaler he's holding). But I did like the cute twist that she just flipped the light back and went back to the way it was rather than making an excuse seeing what he really looks like and leaving. However, they really missed an opportunity I think to not change her appearance as well. I guess that's fine if all of Virgin America's ticket buying population are a bunch of nerdy guys with high standards, but it might have been nice to have them both be less attractive under the full light.

Also, note all the empty seats again? So not doing a great job selling your flight experience to me by showing me the kinds of people I dread being seated next to in an unusually empty plane. Hope you liked this week's look at ads.