A Commercial Break

Lego

Someone called Santander has sponsored a television advert for Lego. It looks like an expensive ad, too. They've even paid for Lewis Hamilton to appear in it. It works well, I really like the Lego bridge they make, I wonder where you can get one?

But why have they made this Lego advert, do they own Lego or shares in Lego? But then why would they put their own logo on it rather than the Lego logo? And what on on earth is the man talking about in the background? I mean, these people are building an amazing bridge out of Lego, and a really famous motor racing driver is helping them, you think he would have something to say about that, right? But no, he seems to have the script for some corporate induction video.

Lastly, who are Santander and why are they on my television?

Renault



Renault have made an advert about cars. Which is unusual for a car-maker these days. A man with a mildly aggressive voice asks lots of questions over video clips from the We Got That B-Roll car library, "Is it still acceptable that some of us can drive, while others barely have the means to get around?" he complains, over videos of a poor man pulling a hand cart, and a lorry full of people in a third world country. It turns out later that the advert is for some electric cars.

How the electric cars help the poor man pulling the cart or the people in the back of the lorry in the third world country to suddenly have a means to get around is not explained. Maybe they have shares in the power stations that could be providing the electricity for the electric cars, and so will get rich from the increased electricity needed, and be able to buy themselves a nice electric car?

Later in the film (we can call it a film, because it's almost as long as Apocalypse Now) the aggressive man reveals, "From next year, Renault will launch a range of zero emission vehicles, to drive the car forward again, towards people".

Now, I don't know about you, but to me that sounds a bit dangerous. For a start, these electric cars a really quiet, so if they're going to start driving them forwards towards people, potentially there could be a lot of accidents. If I looked around and found that someone was driving their car towards me, I'm not sure I'd be too bothered whether it was powered by electricity, diesel, or the milk from lactating pussy cats.

I'm not sure I'm in favour of Renualt's new range of aggressive electric cars, even if the nice people in the third world do have shares in the power station.

PS

Why is it a rule that all electric cars should look like cheaply made props from the movie Starship Troopers?