Halloween Commercial Pitch

“Look bottom line, we’re not doing so well with our ads and with Halloween coming up, we’re out of ideas. Eric, as requested, I’m giving you two minutes to pitch your commercial idea. I don’t want to hear another ‘running down the street, racing the streetlights at night’ bit,” The man in the suit sits back in his chair overly confident that Eric will botch this. Eric remains seated while taking a light sip of his water. The room is dead quiet. He proceeds to button his jacket while standing up. To someone who doesn’t know Eric, you would think that he is very driven and confident in what he does.

“Alright, so here’s is something we haven’t done before.” Eric approaches the head of the table, standing in front of a large projector. He gives a quick nod to someone on the other end. The lights go out and the screen lights up. “We are a shoe company for runners,” He laughs quietly to himself while continuing, “I guess I’ll shift gears and ask you this, so during Halloween, I’m sure when you were kids, you would watch all those slasher and chainsaw movies under the covers – scared out of your minds for the female actress getting chased all the time, but here is something that I noticed after recently watching a few.” The board members remain silent.

“Why is it that the girl in the horror movies always gets taken by the killer or monster?” There is still silence. The screen in the background shows old 80’s horror movie scenes as he continues talking.

“No one, really?”

One woman raises her hand, “Because she slept with the love interest and now she isn’t a virgin anymore, isn’t that like a rule you can’t break in horror movies?” 

The audience starts to laugh with another hand going up, “It’s probably karma, she was mean to all the other girls?” 

Eric stands there puzzled by the answers. “It might be because she is always alone – away from the group.”

“Well these sound like pretty good reasons, I would have to say that you are all wrong.” Eric finishes while the screen behind him changes. It shows a woman tying the laces of her new runners.“It’s because she didn’t have the right shoes on.” Some lean in to fully grasp the concept.

Eric goes on, “My commercial would show all of the old school zombies, vampires, goules, slashers – one scene after the other trying to chase the girl. The camera would focus in on her new shoes and that she can’t be caught.” The big man in the suit speaks up, “Eric, while that sounds like an interesting idea, how would you present this?”

Eric moves beside the projected screen, “I’m glad you asked that, she would be sitting in a cabin living room with some friends and then trouble happens and she runs into the next scene with other monsters chasing her, and goes through a dark house and through corn fields and then she would run across that football field scene where the zombie hands would reach up from the ground trying to catch her, but she would do one of those high-knees-going-from-tire-to-tire bits and at that point there would be like 20 of these monster/killer bad guys trailing behind her with their knives and chainsaws and eventually there would be a finish line that she would be sprinting to with all the police and FBI officials waiting to take down all the bad guys once she finishes the race of her life.” Eric takes in a deep breath as the lights come back on and the projector turns off.

“Well, what do you think?” Eric asks.