These days, most of video advertisements consists of either, the Top Stars/Sports player, great sense of humor or stimulating sexual portion. It is a great way to approach customers. Apparently, stimulation and affiliation helps the consumers to easily get attached to the brands that consist of these stimulation, yet I believe the sympathetic, empathetic touching scenes can be a part of those category.

When I was surfing the internet, I bumped up to the video of advertisement under a name of “This is the Saddest Commercial You’ll Ever See.” This is a commercial of a life insurance company in Thailand. This video was in Thai language, however, the translation in English led me to fully understand the context.

In this video, a born deaf and speechless father comes out as a protagonist. He had one daughter who used to have a good memories with him. As she grows up and goes to school, she gets bullied and made fun of due to his father’s abnormality. The daughter then decides to commit a suicide hoping that her life would be ended from all the stress she got externally and internally. However, his father sense the absence of his daughter and find her outside of his house with bleeding arm. He then decides to take her to hospital and beg a doctor to save his daughter which would cost everything he got. Eventually, the girl gets her life back and then the commercial is put to the end.

Now, I understand that this is a commercial from a life insurance company and thus it is inevitable to have a serious content in the video. I am not writing this to set a boundary that all the advertisements should contain a sorrowful and a touching message, however I am proposing that this medium can be wisely and well used to move consumers’ mind.

According to a famous theory ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,’ social needs is one of the most needs that people go through. This sense of touching message sends the affiliating message directly to the consumers whose then moved and get affected in his/her decision making.

At this developing society with better technology and better medium of commercials, a well-used touching lesson consisting advertisement could be a great way to move consumer’s mind as well as their behaviour of purchasing certain product!!