By MARSHA MERCER
Time magazine picked Elon Musk as its 2021 Person of
the Year – the individual “who most shaped the previous 12 months, for better
or for worse.”
Musk, with his Tesla and SpaceX companies, emerged
this year “not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the
richest example of a massive shift in our society,” Time fawned. “Like it or
not we are now in Musk’s world.”
Well, maybe. I’ve never ridden in a Tesla, nor do I
plan to any trips into space, although I know someone who loves playing Solitaire
while letting his Tesla maneuver through highway traffic.
Even if the car is amazing, I can’t imagine a Tesla
exerting the emotional pull of a restored 1966 Chevy Impala convertible like
the one in “Holiday Ride,” Chevrolet’s new commercial. The four-minute version is
a movie unto itself about grief, love and the power of memories.
With so many of us on edge in year two of a merciless
pandemic, the Chevy ad is one of several holiday commercials that tug at our
heart strings and show us our humanity.
Spoiler alert – I will be telling the stories of these
ads. The Chevy commercial features a grieving widower in rural America who
visits the dusty, dilapidated Impala in the barn, fighting tears as he holds a
photo of a smiling young woman, presumably his late wife, in happy times with
the new car.
His daughter sees him putting holiday wreaths on the
barn door and secretly enlists local mechanics for “night work.” They
painstakingly restore the car to its former glory for a surprise reveal.
It’s “the best Christmas gift I could ever have,” dad tells daughter, and they and their dog hop in for a spin. If you don’t tear up watching, you may have left your heart in 2020.
“Kindness, the Greatest Gift,” set to Adele’s new song “Hold On,” features the kindness of strangers during the pandemic. In this Amazon global holiday campaign ad, we see a young woman university student alone, struggling to return to near-normal life.
In a park, an older woman neighbor, feeding birds from her palm, notices the younger woman sitting alone, seemingly downcast.
Back in her apartment, the older woman hears a news
report about young people being anxious during the pandemic. She orders
something on her cell phone from, of course, Amazon. The younger woman receives
the surprise gift of a bird feeder and is touched by the kind gesture. The ad
fades out with the two talking and sharing a park bench.
“The past 18 months have been challenging for people
across the globe, including many young adults,” Ed Smith, an executive at
Amazon European Union, said in a statement. “So this year, whilst the world
will not be totally back to normal, opportunities for kindness and connection
will take on a newfound importance.”
Another European commercial available to watch online comes
from Posten, the postal service of Norway. The heartwarming, adult-themed “When
Harry Met Santa” imagines brief, Christmas Eve encounters that evolve over
years into a romance. The ad celebrates the 50th anniversary in 2022
of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Norway and the postal service’s
commitment to diversity.
Closer to home and more traditional is a Wegmans Food
Markets broadcast ad, which features a young boy energetically and
enthusiastically doing chores – raking leaves, pushing a heavy trash bin to the
curb, delivering huge pots of mums, shoveling snow and putting up holiday
lights.
As his family celebrates with a big holiday dinner,
presumably from Wegmans, the boy dishes up a plate of food and takes it next door.
Viewers realize then he has been doing the chores not for his own family but
for his neighbor, an elderly woman. She comes to the door and is touched and surprised
by the gift of food.
The ad is one of three in a campaign Wegmans calls
“Back to Happy.” They use as a theme the children’s song, “The more we get
together, the happier we’ll be.”
And, so, may we all be happier on Earth this holiday
season – even if we must steer our own cars through the traffic to get together
with family and friends.
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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