Hi. I've made a lot of commercials over the years, and this one is horrible. But sadly it's not the first time this has happened.
Story:
[Disclamer: I wasn’t here for this one but I heard the story after the fact. I heard it from two people who claimed to be there. The stories were fairly similar so I’m inclined to believe this actually happened.]
Back around 2002ish—when TV commercials had giant budgets and brands were willing to fund what amounted to high concept art films—a major tampon manufacturer set out to make a Super Bowl commercial. The concept was a Busby Berkeley style musical song and dance tribute to The Period.
It was to be a Celebration of Menstruation.
If you’re not familiar with the Busby Berkeley musicals, these are the ones from the 1930s where a long line of showgirls are doing elaborately choreographed dancing in elaborate costumes on elaborate sets.
(Check out the dance scenes from Gold Diggers of 1933 on Youtube.)
These particular showgirls were dressed as giant tampons, and as they descended the steps a fountain of red liquid soaked their costumes. There was also a synchronized swimming scene with dozens of swimmers in floating tampon costumes swimming in a pool of red water.
No really. That was the concept.
They probably spent millions on this. The costumes had to be at least $20-30k each and they needed hundreds, because the costumes were ruined every time they got sprayed with the red liquid. According to my back of the envelope math, the dancers, choreographers, stages, sets, lighting, cranes, water tanks, crew, multiple cameras, and film stock probably got into 8 figures.
Of course everyone on the crew knew this was a bad idea from the start. But the crew members don’t get paid for their ideas and nobody gives a fuck about their opinion. So most likely everyone kept their mouth shut and went about their jobs.
On day 3 or 4 of the shoot someone from the Big Tampon c-suite came to their senses and shut the thing down. In one telling of the story the tampon execs didn’t know it was happening and when they found out a bunch of people lost their jobs (or so I heard).
Thankfully it never was completed and it never aired. But I’m willing to bet the film neg is still in some random vault waiting to be unearthed by a future archivist.
People at big organizations do stupid shit. Which is proof that they’re people and not gods.
These people are usually fairly intelligent and common sensical in person. But large organizations, like a multinational corporations or ad agencies, have strange incentives. And following those incentives can lead otherwise intelligent people to stupid places.
Case in point is this Jaguar commercial. I don’t know if you’ve seen a new Jag, but they’re really fucking boring. Now, anyone with common sense can see that they’re boring, but the people at Jaguar probably had to look at marketing data to figure this out.
So they decided to rebrand as something exciting! and unique! and different!
Jaguar used to make sexy cars. The QC was terrible, and they were known for having electrical issues (the joke was never drive a Jag in the rain), but damn they were sexy.
There’s a concept in computer science called Conway's Law, which basically states that “organizations will design systems that copy their communication structure.” But what determines an organization’s communication structure? It’s determined by the organizational culture.
So Clippy from MS Office 97 was a product of mid-90s Microsoft corporate culture. The iPhone and it’s game changing UI was a product of early 2000s Apple corporate culture. And this piece of shit ad is a product of Jaguar’s corporate culture.
It’s apparent that Jaguar/Tata Motors have been infected by the woke mind virus, because nothing about this ad is sexy. Sexy was never on the table. Because sexy or sex or beauty probably isn’t allowed at Tata Motors. Because these people are highly credentialed members of the Global Managerial Elite, and they don’t do sexy. Try to dress provocatively or flirt with a coworker and HR will nip that shit in the bud.
These types of organizations select for boring people. And this ad is a boring person’s idea of “breaking moulds” (and there were probably many hours of zoom calls about using the Bong spelling of “mould” because someone was worried the American spelling was too close to the stuff that grows in your shower).
Now, the fact that there’s no car in this spot leads me to believe it’s part of some “high concept” new product rollout. And there’s part of me that thinks this is an elaborate joke/stunt.
But sadly I have a lot of experience with this. Because big orgs do stupid shit. I just watched another luxury car brand almost do the most racist thing ever (thankfully they changed course at the last minute). And my experience leads me to believe that the execs at Jaguar thought this was a good idea.
So please, pan this ad. Meme it. Ratio the fuck out of it.
There have to be penalties for this type of stupidity. And maybe a bunch of people will lose their jobs. And maybe some of them will wake the fuck up.
And maybe, hopefully, those people might decide to start making beautiful sexy cars again.

This, but with giant walking tampons getting sprayed by blood 👍
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