• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, November 4, 2024

By tomorrow, the tsunami of political ads will be gone from the airwaves.

What will be in their place?

Well, for one, probably more insurance commercials, which I’ll take any day over a tsunami of Medicare Advantage spots.

 And ahead of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Liberty Mutual has released “Weird Dream,” showing yellow-shirted, aviator-glasses-wearing Doug and his sidekick, the mini-yellow-shirted and aviator-glasses-wearing Li Mu Emu, as major balloons in a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day-like spectacle.

It’s a credible setup: the Macy’s Parade boasts more than 30 brand mascots. It’s visually entertaining, and a way to mark time by how the characters look. So, the device comes in handy in ads, movies, TV shows and even video games. 

The idea of viewing these floating balloons through a NYC Central Park West apartment window is a familiar look, too. Most recently, in the 2023 Netflix film “Maestro,” Leonard Bernstein and his daughter watch the then-new “Aviator Snoopy” balloon pass perilously close to their windows.

Liberty Mutual uses a similar scene, this time with the Emu’s magnified feathered head and terrifying giant beak at the glass.  The dynamic duo sails above a marching band and a LiMu float, and we get the message: customize and save hundreds of dollars on car insurance with Liberty Mutual.

But that’s when disaster strikes. Doug gets his nose stuck in a streetlamp near the ground and gets punctured and deflates. Emu goes, too. Pfffft.

And then, after one of the smoothest cuts ever executed in an editing booth, we see Doug the human alive and lying on a therapist’s couch.

“You have this dream every night? “she asks. “Yes, every night,” he says.

That’s serious Freudian therapy when you lie on a sofa, as Doug does, and the doc sits up. 

So let’s go all Freudian. According to dreamclarify.com, a balloon floating in the air “represents your yearning to break free from limitations and societal expectations,” not unexpectedly.

What’s more, the elevated perspective “can represent a journey towards greater wisdom, self-awareness, and personal transformation” says the dream site.

Conversely, you don’t need to be Freud to see that dreaming of a popped balloon could symbolize depression, a lack of progress, or feeling constricted and overwhelmed.

“Weird Dream” is beautifully produced, slightly amusing, and balloon death indeed gets attention.

But as a takeaway brand message, do you really want to go with deflation? 

Meanwhile, in a separate Liberty Mutual campaign (the one that features Lady Liberty in the background) from a different agency, we get more of this depreciation message.

“Wax/Truth Tellers” features a very weird-looking dude, like a combination red-headed Elvis and Max Headroom, with a powder blue suit, pink shirt, moustache and soul patch, talking about how he saved hundreds by ”customizing my car insurance.”

 He continues, “With  the money I saved,  I bought a wax sculpture of myself.”

And there he is, a creepy guy standing next to a perfect waxy likeness. The effect is mega- creepy.

 “Look at this craftsmanship. They even got my nostril right,” he brags.

To me, the word “nostril” is hilarious, and you rarely hear it in commercials.

But the setup is off-putting. It’s hard to get your bearings, especially when the wax copy suddenly gets decapitated by an errant frisbee, and starts melting.

Now we get simultaneous deflation!  What’s going on with this client?

Have the constant iterations required to talk about saving money on car insurance driven the creatives mad?

Does an unconscious deflation message dilute the brand?

I guess we can just paraphrase a line from the election season and say, these guys are creepy and just weird as hell.

But in this case, the message breaks through.