A young man hiking through a forest is abruptly confronted with a
fork in the path. He pauses, his hands in his pockets, and looks back
and forth between his options. As he hesitates, images from possible
futures flicker past: the young man wading into the ocean, hitchhiking,
riding a bus, kissing a beautiful woman, working, laughing, eating,
running, weeping. The series resolves at last into a view of a different
young man, with his thumb out on the side of a road. As a car slows to
pick him up, we realize the driver is the original man from the
crossroads, only now he’s accompanied by a lovely woman and a child. The
man smiles slightly, as if confident in the life he’s chosen and happy
to lend that confidence to a fellow traveler. As the car pulls away and
the screen is lit with gold—for it’s a commercial we’ve been
watching—the emblem of the Ford Motor Company briefly appears.
The advertisement I’ve just described ran in New Zealand in 2008. And
it is, in most respects, a normal piece of smartly assembled and
quietly manipulative product promotion. But there is one very unusual
aspect to this commercial.
I hope this helps you!
