“So what about the eye brows?”

On Sunday there was an advertisement for Klondike bars and the eternal ads of, “what would you do…” It was a good bit as they track down people that tweeted what they would do for one, and put them to the test to see if they’d do it. Well, there was this one that said they’d shave their eye brows and my girlfriend said, “No!” to which I stated at the screen and said, “what’s so bad about that?”

It was unique to have two completely opposite reactions to the same event. My girlfriend, I think, could almost feel the loss of the eye brows as they were shaved off, and I stared blankly having no response. I mean, why is it bad to lose an eye brow? Working outside the sweat would surely get annoying, but why would or should there be any emotional response to losing something that just provides a function of blocking sweat?

As I questioned this, and my girlfriend mentioned that the person on the screen would “look weird” until it grew back, it finally dawned on me as to why we had such a different response. You see, I do everything I can to avoid looking at a person’s face. I shy away from eye contact therefore, naturally, I don’t typically notice things like eye brows. Whether they’re there or not, odds are I won’t take notice of their existence.

I’m confident in saying that the ad agency that made this ad had no intention of creating an ad that led to such an interesting discovery and conversation, but they certainly did so. It was great being able to have a conversation that led to discovery for myself and for my girlfriend. I’ll be curious to pay attention to more advertisements to see if there are other ads that may have a message that may not fully be understood like the Klondike ad and if so, what could be learned from them?