Can you hear that?

Aired February 3rd, 2008, this commercial was aired for PepsiCo EnAble. Coincidentally, the two men that are in the car, are PepsiCo’s employees, and are deaf. The character that plays ‘Bob’, has worked for PepsiCo in Dallas for 27 years, but is not deaf. He got caught up in the deaf community through a church that his wife and himself attended, where the services were performed in sign language.

Clay Broussard, the manager at PepsiCo proposed the idea for this ad, He said “this is the PepsiCo flavor of that joke”.

The commercial itself introduces the hearing impaired culture to the community. Now think about it, you’re getting all excited and noisy when you watch the Super Bowl, volume to the max, when it’s a commercial break, and you don’t hear anything. How funny would it have been to see people checking to making sure they didn’t accidentally put their TV’s on mute? It might take someone a good 5 to 10 seconds to put the pieces together.






The commercial displays 2 guys on their way to their friend’s house to watch the Super Bowl, what do you know that the commercial has no sound, of course, because the whole point is the fact that they are deaf. Well on their way, they start arguing because they can’t find Bob’s house. So the one driving get’s an idea. He’ll honk the horn. While every house starts lighting up, one in the bunch reminds dark and motionless. Oh, they fond Bob’s house!

I have to honestly say I didn’t get it at first. I was thinking “Oh well how can they tell it’s his house?” then it hit me. They whole point of this commercial is to send awareness of the deaf community, and there I was missing the entire point. Sixty seconds of totally silence, is like an eternity to the never-ending noise of the Super Bowl, don’t you think? They used something so popular and common in deaf culture, and literally turned into an ad. That’s using your head.