I've often mentioned here that I'm hearing impaired (deaf in one year, partial deafness in the other), due to a hereditary condition and have quite a few relatives who area also deaf or have varying degrees of deafness.
For those of you who have a disability, or are close to someone who does, you may enjoy a commercial by PepisiCo which is being aired during the Superbowl today. It's the first such commercial ever aired during this type of event and possibly the only one ever done entirely with no sound.
The two friends in the ad communicate entirely in sign language, without using their voices. There are captions to help those who don't know ASL understand what is being signed. Clay Broussard, the ad's creator, plays their friend Bob.
If you're not going to watch the SuperBowl (and I'm not - I plan to quilt!!) you can watch the entire commercial here:
I watched it. Very nice. It is interesting that a major advertiser would go to those lengths considering the cost of advertising during that venue. Kudos to them.
this is just for you, Kathyl. :) j. ____________________________________________________
I've often mentioned here that I'm hearing impaired (deaf in one year, partial deafness in the other), due to a hereditary condition and have quite a few relatives who area also deaf or have varying degrees of deafness.
For those of you who have a disability, or are close to someone who does, you may enjoy a commercial by PepisiCo which is being aired during the Superbowl today. It's the first such commercial ever aired during this type of event and possibly the only one ever done entirely with no sound.
The two friends in the ad communicate entirely in sign language, without using their voices. There are captions to help those who don't know ASL understand what is being signed. Clay Broussard, the ad's creator, plays their friend Bob.
If you're not going to watch the SuperBowl (and I'm not - I plan to quilt!!) you can watch the entire commercial here:
Thanks for the heads up. I plan to do both. Got myself a new little HDTV and put it right at the end of my quilting table.
No I didn't buy it to watch the Super Bowl. I got it back in October with some birthday money so I could watch instructional DVDs to help with my quilting. High School Musical looked pretty good on it too!
That is a great story. Here's some background information that was in an e-mail we received: From the newsroom of the Associated Press, Thursday, January 24, 2008 ..... Only deaf people will get this Super Bowl ad PepsiCo's 60 seconds of utter silence will stump the hearing-abled. The Associated Press
NEW YORK - Amid the wall-to-wall sound during next Sunday's Super Bowl, one commercial from PepsiCo could send some viewers grabbing for their remotes to check whether they'd accidentally hit the mute button.
The pre-game advertisement features a joke that originates from the deaf community and will play out on screen over 60 seconds of total silence, a veritable eternity when it comes to the noisiness of Super Bowl ads.
"It's a popular story and we just turned it into an advertisement," said Clay Broussard, a supply and logistics manager at PepsiCo who proposed the idea for the ad. "This is the PepsiCo flavor of that joke."
The joke goes like this: Two guys are driving to their friend Bob's house to watch the Super Bowl. Once they get to Bob's street, neither knows which house is his. They sit in the car, arguing, until one of them has an idea.
He starts laying on the horn, and one by one, the houses light up and dogs start barking. One house stays dark and quiet: It's Bob's.
Deaf people will be falling out of their chairs in disbelief, National Association of the Deaf president Bobbie Beth Scoggins wrote in an e-mail response to questions. Hearing people, Scoggins wrote, will stop what they're doing to see why there are no sounds. She believes it's an historic first for an ad featuring American Sign Language to get such prominent play.
"I was glad to see this part of deaf culture awareness shared in a most clever way," Scoggins, who is deaf, wrote by e-mail as she was traveling.
Broussard, who plays Bob in the commercial, has worked for PepsiCo in Dallas for 27 years. He got involved in the deaf community through a church he and his wife attended, where the services were conducted entirely in sign language. Broussard is not deaf.
The two actors who play Bob's friends Brian Dowling and Darren Therriault are also PepsiCo employees, and are deaf. Dowling works for Frito-Lay in Arizona, and Therriault works for PepsiCo in Chicago.
Broussard worked on the ad concept on his own time. He said, "This was all extra credit."
It was 18 months before he showed it to senior managers, who decided they wanted it for the Super Bowl.
The ad was directed by Baker Smith, with creative help from BBDO-NY. A PepsiCo spokeswoman declined to say how much the ad cost.C 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Click on, or copy and paste:
formatting link
Julia in MN
----------- This message has been scanned for viruses by Norton Anti-Virus
I suspect that it subtle enough that most hearing people will have to see it a couple times to figure out that the right house is the one where the lights DON'T go on, because the person there doesn't hear the car's horn. I'm not sure I'd have gotten it if I hadn't seen the explanation first.
Julia in MN
----------- This message has been scanned for viruses by Norton Anti-Virus
i got it right away, in fact as soon as they honked the horn i got it. i think most folks unless they've had enough contact with deaf folks wouldnt get it right away. its outside our comfort level somehow. i'm blind as a bat, cant see squat without my specs. something i do...is note where furniture is located and doors etc in case i have to leave the house in a hurry, in the dark, if there was a fire for instance. i figure if it happened real quick i might not have time to grab my glasses or i might lose them in the chaos. i never made a conscious decision to do this but i know i do it. something else i do without fail is if i become aware i'm talking to someone who is deaf, i make sure i am facing them so they can read my lips. not all people do that unless they've had some contact with deaf people or somehow have realized that it is common sense. my ds got meningitis when he was 14yo, while in hospital i noticed he was very quiet even after the anitbiotics would have started reducing inflamation and therefore he'd be more coherent. didnt take me long to realize he couldnt hear enough to respond to the nurses questions. i soon found the right volume and tone of voice and spoke facing him directly so he could read my lips. i dont think even he was aware that he would indeed read lips. oddly enough he couldnt hear lower octave aka mens voices at all. one male nurse took to writing him notes when i wasnt around to translate, lol.
just one of those things i guess. i thot that story was hilarious. lots of things in this world we dont always understand nor do, unless we do understand. hmmmm, ok, that last sentence maybe didnt makes sense to anyone but me, oh well. jeanne
I missed that one ! Also missed the touchdown that NY made ! I stepped out to get more cookies..LOL I did enjoy the end of the game although football is boring to me for 99% of the time. Mary
Hubby started watching from the first second of the pre-game show all the way through the last second of the post-game wrap-up. He never saw the commercial, even though I showed him on the computer....I don't think it actually made it for some reason .
I read today that this commercial was shown during the pre-game show. Unfortunately this means it did not make it to the online resource for Super Bowl commercials, nor did it get rated in the various surveys.
InspirePoint website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.