Back in the day, DieHard commercials used to go to great lengths to illustrate how long their batteries lasted. In one such illustration, they left a car frozen on a lake to see if it would start. In a more recent commercial from Y&R Chicago intended to reach a younger audience, we see beat boxer Reggie Watts powered by the Die Hard Platinum battery perform for a bit. The battery powering Watts and all his equipment then starts a car.
Given that the only real power Watts is using here is for a few lights and a small, tabletop amplifier, the spot feels weak and doesn’t really illustrate the staying power of the battery very well.
Of the commercial, one YouTuber wrote, “Not impressive, tiny amplifier, LED lamps. Any car battery could do this.”
And another wrote, “Led lights? little tiny fucking amp? tiny ass little engine to start? I wanna see it run a wall of halogen HEADLIGHTS and a 1000W amp meant for car speaker systems and then it needs to start a 7.2L diesel truck. Then I would be impressed.”
While the ad does try to connect with an audience hip enough to know who Reggie Watts is, the ad fails becasue people are smart enough to realize it doesn’t take a lot of power to run a few small lights, a portable amp and a tiny mic for less than a minute.
And the three month frozen car is a far more real world scenario than a battery powered beat boxer.
