Navy Plays ‘Where’s Waldo’. But No Waldo!
Try to find the Navy Seals in this ad:
Good luck. Cause you won’t. We had an art director blow this up digitally down to the dot and she couldn’t find a single Navy Seal or Navy Seal part. Bad move by the Navy on a number of counts.
For this ad to be effective for, say, a guy flipping through a mag waiting for a haircut, its gotta capture his imagination. This guy, say he’s pretty smart, but he’s been laid off twice in the last five months. Had the economy been going okay, he’d never in a million years consider the armed forces, not with what its been stuck doing these past six years. But now he’s a bit more predisposed. Maybe. So, he bites and plays the ‘Where’s Waldo’ thing, seeing how long it’ll take to make out a camouflaged limb or a mud-covered forehead. And as he does, he’s thinking that maybe if he had the skills to hang out here barely noticed, while not being skeezed out by the snakes, maybe that could be cool. Certainly a helluva lot more impressive on his resume than Assistant Dept. Manager at Office Depot, which just shut down and is the reason he’s even bothering to look at the ad in the first place.
But wait. He can’t find ANY faces or bodies. Looks like they just took a photo of a swamp. No Seals at all. Not cool.
The idea isn’t bad, but the execution was a strategic mistake and a plain dumb decision. Even if technically there are Navy Seals in this photo hidden behind a tree or completely submerged underwater, so what?! We could get the same shot with a bunch of fifth graders. ‘Okay kids, on three everyone hide like we practiced. Johnny behind the tree, Amie and Tom go under the water and hold your breath and count to 20.’
In our opinion, the U.S. Navy loses out on authenticity and honesty and a chance to actually get their ad passed around. ‘Hey, try to find the five Navy Seals in this ad. They’re there, I promise.’ If that was the case their audience would be ready for the next ad, maybe in the dessert this time. They’d take time with the ad and search for the dudes. And they’d probably even remember Navy Seals. Cool.
That’s our take. What’s yours?
December 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Maybe just maybe the strategy is that the seals are so well protected that it’s a good thing you can’t find them.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Sounds like you spent more time trying to find fault with the military than you did searching for the meaning of the advertisement.
June 29th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
As you may not understand because of your naivety or your left-wing views of society, Seals are not meant to be spotted. Also your theory of them being completely submerged shows the lack of observation you truly have. For example when someone is in water what happens to the surrounding water? It ripples. So they submerge, but for how long your 20 seconds that the fifth graders are going to do? No. There would still be ripples. Since the water goes to the background they would have to be motionless for quite a long time. Another skill Seals are trained at. So before you go and say the military made a mistake, you might want to evaluate yourself first Civilian.
July 26th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
yea….but they still exist. still do things that would make whoever posted this picture shit their pants like a little girl. even if they are in this or not…..you couldnt be them…at all.
December 29th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
SEaLs are out there, you just can’t see them. after so much seconds they would’ve got cha tied down and you smelling your own turdcake that ya just had.
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:26 pm
The Navy SEALs go through months of training, the hardest training in the world. They’re trained to resist interrigation, kill you without being seen/heard, get in, extract the HVT, then get out with being seen/heard, and most of all Stealth.
December 13th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Please check the link
http://i451.photobucket.com/albums/qq239/folder_dump/1.png