Advertising is an odd business. You work so hard under terribly stressful circumstances and if you’re very lucky everything comes together and you make a commercial that people notice and might even like.
But the odds are against it. A thousand things can go wrong at any step of the process and ruin all your hard work. Things you could never imagine.
Like the following two TV commercials currently airing here in South Australia.
The first one, for Foodland, South Australia’s largest grocery store chain, features a lovely young woman as an ordinary shopper.
The second commercial, which just began airing, is a coronavirus public service announcement created by the government of South Australia.
The first time Jamie saw this commercial she said, “Hey, isn’t that the woman who’s in the Foodland commercial?”
Indeed, it is.
Next time we shop at Foodland, we’ll be checking all our purchases very carefully to make sure this Kung Flu bitch hasn’t sneezed any green snot around our local store.
This is, however, far from the worst case of unfortunate casting in the history of advertising.
Back in 1971 American consumer goods conglomerate Proctor & Gamble cast a sweet, innocent-looking young model to appear on the packaging of its Ivory Snow detergent. The company had for decades promoted the product with the line “99 and 44/100% pure.”
Unfortunately, that model, Marilyn Chambers, became the world’s most famous porn star a year later when she starred in the film “Behind the Green Door.”
I never saw the film, but I’m pretty sure that whatever was being spewed in it makes green snot seem pretty tame by comparison.
Ah, Marilyn Chambers. Never saw the movie (not for a want of trying), but I suspect it would be pretty tame compared to films today.