AAMI5

Quite a few years ago I used to do Commercials in Sydney, Australia. My favorite one was for AAMI Insurance Company who were famous for their funny commercials.

The day dawned beautifully as I headed out to the shoot, which was being done at a local airfield which had been closed for the day. I got into costume and met the director who went through what I was to do. Simply, I was to be a Dad at a circus food stall with hyper kids wanting everything in sight. Behind me is my parked car and on taking a quick glance around, see to my unbelieving eyes, an Elephant smashing the back of it. I’m then to stagger toward the beast/Cut to my now repaired car in my driveway.

No problem, sez I.

HOWEVER!

Setting up the ‘Circus’ went well until the elephant was brought in and walked across the runway, smack in front of an aircraft which obviously hadn’t heard that the Airfield was closed. He made a hasty overshoot and went elsewhere! No one asked him what he thought of a Elephant blocking his way!

Other bits got shot and finally came the moment for the elephant to do her stuff. I had met her early on and got friendly by means of copious amounts of candy-floss. Anyway, the Director calls ‘Action” and I start ordering the kid’s food with, of course, my back to the action.

Then I hear ‘Cut, Cut!” and the Director goes over to the handler to find out why the elephant wasn’t stamping on the back of the car. The handler explained that the elephant had been trained on a BLACK car and this one was RED, so the elephant didn’t want to be in trouble for stamping on the wrong one! He also explained that he had to use a Thai command that the elephant can never hear again, otherwise it would promptly stamp on the trunk of the nearest black car!

Well, the handler somehow persuaded the elephant that it was OK to do the job, so Take 2! The director reminded all of us that they only had one shot at it because they only had the one trunk lid. It went well at last and we all breathed a sigh of relief. So the old adage is not quite true. I loved that day!

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AdLib
Admin

What fun, PPO! Now I know why they say not to buy red cars…because of the elephants, of course!

Very cool! Thanks for this!

SueInCa
Member

I love older commercials and that one did not disappoint. Good show mate.

Kalima
Admin

Hi ppo. It certainly sounds like a fun day, and I loved the fact that the elephant had trained on a black car so wouldn’t destroy the red car. More intelligent than many people I would say.

Shame that I can’t watch the video though. I get a message to “please sign in to watch the video” and when I press it, nothing happens.

Thanks for sharing and for the graphic at the top of your post because I get the general idea.

EDIT:

Signed in to YouTube a few minutes ago, and got “This video is private”. Don’t have time now but will try again later on my Mac.

AdLib
Admin

Kalima, try it now, it should play just fine. Sorry about that!

Kalima
Admin

Working just fine now and thank you.