Let’s have a brief discussion about commercials—the ones on TV. Lately, they seem to have been getting beyond weird.

Some are very creative, some downright non-sensible, including the following examples.

This one is touchy but I’ll try; it ends with a couple, male, female, sitting in separate bath tubs on an otherwise deserted beach. My problem with this ad is that I fail to see what that final scene has to do with the product. Nor can I answer the obvious question of what the pipes are hooked up to? Each tub has its own set. I understand that the drainage is probably just out of the tub, right onto the sand. But just how do they get the water in those tubs, and why? If you are familiar with the scene I have described, you understand why I classified this ad as “touchy” in my initial description.

There is a another rather clever ad showing a guy rolling a log in the water. Then he walks off the log, across the water, grabs a saw and walks through a kitchen, sawing a piece of the counter as he quickly walks past, ends up on a ledge over a hot tub, which he jumps into arms akimbo, lands in the tub standing erect, the tub falls away only to reveal he is sitting on a motorcycle as the water drains away. The theme of this is “does your man smell as good as I do?” The transitions are what make this ad a clever and eye-catching commercial.

I would like to see one of these ad agencies write and film a commercial about a product that has some bearing on our life here in the Valley. There must be a way to cleverly utilize some of our beautiful Valley scenery to promote a product.

How about a compelling shot of Snoqualmie Falls and someone gracefully going over the Falls to illustrate a drain cleaner, for example? “Away go troubles, down the drain.”

To even take that one step further, visualize a para-glider leaping from the top of Mount Si, sailing picturesquely over the river and then gliding onto the top of the Falls, where he lands conveniently, into a padded barrel just as it plummets over the waterfall. At the bottom, he pops up riding a Harley and says something like, “I know your man can’t do what I have just done. But does he smell as good as I do?”

There are also a series of commercials about a local product featuring a Sasquatch getting duped into situations that make him mad; he retaliates, taking his anger out on his tormentors. Not bad, we can almost relate to that. But what if, instead of a Sasquatch, which only a few of us have seen, the butt of the joke, so to speak, was a 600-pound elk and the commercial ended with the elk standing proudly (easy for an elk) with one foot poised on his tormentors back, calmly munching a Washington apple? Something relating to a healthy diet, and also something we can all relate to.

So, if you ad people ever need any real ideas appealing to us folks up here in the Greater Northwest, just get in touch with me.