Ryan Reynold’s company, Aviation Gin, created commercial gold with their new holiday ad. The liquor company played off on the highly criticized Peloton commercial, further mocking the commercial and bringing even more attention to the downward spiraling exercise equipment company.
The original commercial created by Peloton was about a husband giving his wife a peloton bike for Christmas. The wife then starts documenting her journey on the bike for a course of a year. In the beginning, she looks scared to jump on the bike, like she did not want this bike at all. She even had 6 AM alarms to wake up and go workout on the bike. After her one-year journey, she showed her husband the videos and how it changed her life.
Many people deemed this commercial “sexist” as the husband was giving his, already skinny wife, an expensive piece of exercise equipment. In a way, it was indirectly insinuating that the husband got her the bike to make her lose weight. One thing you shouldn’t do is give someone workout equipment that didn’t ask for. It indeed will make them think they overweight and need to work out more. And if you do give your partner a gift, they have a sense of obligation to have to use it, especially when it’s about $2,500. The video was even titled “The Gift that Gives Back”, which can be taken as the husband gives the bike as a gift and in return, he gets a more fit wife. It makes it bigger because it’s the guy giving the workout equipment and not the woman. Additionally, many people argued that the wife should give her husband a gift in the form of divorce papers, which is pretty funny.
Now, the genius move that Aviation Gin took was using the same actress that played the wife in the Peloton commercial. Ryan Reynolds posted the video on Twitter titled “The Gift That Doesn’t Give Back”, which is a definite grab at Peloton. The opening shot is the actress staring into space and looking drained at the bar, and then you see her saying cheers to new beginnings with her friends. This is can make it seem like the Peloton wife actually did get a divorce and is moving onto her new chapter in her life. To make things even better is at the end one the friends saying that she looks great, referencing that whole year of riding the Peloton bike. This is comedy gold for a company mocking another company, and it made their new commercial go viral. This is the type of fun comedy jabs that you would expect from Ryan Reynolds. To make it stand out even more that the company was referencing the Peloton commercial was when he captioned the video post “Exercise bike not included”. This was the least subtle reference to Peloton commercial, but maybe the push needed to make sure everyone knows who they are mocking.
What are your thoughts on each commercial?
