Chevy Certified Service Ad Confirms People Prefer Massages to Certain Death
Chevrolet’s “Real People, Not Actors” commercials, despite sometimes actually featuring actors, do teach viewers value lessons about human psychology.
For example, did you know that the average person doesn’t like having their privacy invaded by a bizarrely intense, sandy-haired man? Or being trapped in a dark room with a bizarrely intense, sandy-haired man? Or being asked to do math?
And now another shocking revelation from the folks in Chevrolet’s marketing department: the average person prefers a free massage to almost certain death.
Who knew?!
Check out the commercial in question, entitled “Two Chambers”:
In the ad, Chevrolet’s sandy-haired man returns to ask a group of allegedly real people whether they would like to go inside a glass box where free massages are
A couple of guys actually do initially volunteer to subject themselves to the scary steel cage that has growling noises coming from it (before chickening out), reinforcing the classic horror movie trope of white guys always having to go see what the mysterious sound is (just stay inside the cabin, Chad!)
Perhaps these brave souls think that they’re about to be taught a lesson about not judging a book by its cover, and that their maverick decision to go into the scary box will be rewarded somehow. But nah, this is a Chevy commercial, which means that this is just an elaborate stunt designed to elicit some epiphany which the participants would have readily admitted if asked before the exercise even began. In this case, the revelation is that people like transparency.
And this relates to cars, you see, because Chevrolet Certified Service offers transparent pricing. (By contrast, Ford presumably throws your service bill into a metal cage with horrifying animal noises coming from it.)
Strangely, this Chevy commercial seems to be missing the part where the focus group participants complain, “Hey, I picked the glass massage parlor, how come I’m being forced to listen to a lecture about Chevrolet Certified Service right now when I should be getting my back rubbed? You didn’t even tell me there was a ‘door number three,’ you sandy-haired bastard!”
Patrick Grieve was born in Southwestern Ohio and has lived there all of his life, with the exception of a few years spent getting a Creative Writing degree in Southeastern Ohio. He loves to take road trips, sometimes to places as distant as Northeastern or even Northwestern Ohio. Patrick also enjoys old movies, shopping at thrift stores, going to ballgames, writing about those things, and watching Law & Order reruns. He just watches the original series, though, none of the spin-offs. And also only the ones they made before Jerry Orbach died. Season five was really the peak, in his opinion. See more articles by Patrick.