King's Island Ride Warriors

With about the same intensity that you usually only get in commercials about the military and men's shaving products I give you the "Ride Warriors". In my area the Ride Warriors are promoting Kings Dominion in Richmond Va. but this particular one is for King's Island which is in Ohio. Apparently they're for different parks all over the country. There is basically nothing different about the commercial except for the stock footage of the rollercoasters for each park.



Now, the basic message of this commercial seems to be "Ride our roller coasters or else you pussy!" Which is certainly very direct approach. By smacking the viewer in the face they're hoping to remind the viewer that "Yes, I like rollercoasters and these people are telling me that because this is so, I am a bad-ass. Moreover people who perhaps don't like rollercoasters are worthy of my mistrust disdain and most likely of a disagreeable sexual orientation "

Yes, rollercoasters are extreme. Extremity comes in degrees however and it seems like this commercial is trying to come up with a concrete placement on the extremity scale. If we suppose that pet therapy with kittens at the local nursing home is at the bottom of the extremity scale and climbing mount everest during the dead of winter without oxygen and naked is at the top then riding a rollercoaster is certainly somewhere north of hanging out at base camp. Thinking about different things that the Ride Warriors could say is less extreme than a roller coaster. This led to a fun exercise my girlfriend tried out while driving around where we yelled out things less extreme than bad-ass worthy roller coasters:

"You'll think sex is overrated after these four loops of fury!"

"Like drugs? You won't anymore after the high you get from this ride!"

"Riding this rollercoaster will piss off your parents in a good way!"

"Believe that what I'm saying is cool because we're walking through a non-descript tunnel with a sepia tone and a shaky hand held camera!"

We did this for about ten minutes.

While a lot of commercials that are directed towards middle aged and older adults use one spokesperson who uses a reassuring and calming tone to draw people into their product this commercial (which is aimed at a younger demographic) does something markedly different that I usually see in PSA's telling me not to smoke/drink/screw/whatever. It's simple really: get a group of ethnically diverse teens or 20-somethings and have them all say the same thing while the camera pans around and fades between the eventually indistinguishable youths. I guess it helps reinforce that all the cool kids are riding rollercoasters and the best way to fit in (which is the main goal of every kid and teen even when they're trying to be an individual). The best part of this technique is that you only need a tenth of script you usually need for a commercial. Just come up with three lines of dialogue and have the actors repeat it for thiry seconds. Seriously, they end up just repeating each other. Its kind of like if Lil' Jon wrote a song about rollercoasters. I can't wait to see how that dance is performed.