Who’s cutting onions?
There’s few things that get your emotions running quite like a good Christmas commercial.
Chevy just put out their “Holiday To Remember” ad in association with the Alzheimer’s Association and now another ad is getting lots of attention online, and honestly it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.
It’s not from some major company that poured tons of dollars into production. They didn’t go out and hire big name marketing gurus and run focus groups to determine what would “hit” the hardest. It’s just a local business doing what they do best: Helping people make friends.
Charlie’s Bar is a small pub in Northern Ireland and this Christmas they decided to put together a little advertisement for their bar that plays of the famous W.B. Yeats quote:
“There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t yet met.”
They teamed up with local content creator Aoife Teague and over the course of three hours, filmed one of the most heartwarming commercials you’ve ever seen.
It opens with an old man bringing flowers to his late wife’s grave, clearly struggling with being lonely as the holidays roll around. He then takes a walk down the street and tries to say hi to a few people, but everyone seems to busy and ignores the poor old man.
He then decides to stop in Charlie’s Bar the same time a young couple with a dog walks in. After grabbing a table and a pint of Guinness, the man settles in and it looks like he’d be spending the night alone when the couple’s small dog walks over and hops up next to him in the booth. The couple notices and then goes over to join him and the commercial closes, giving the feeling that a new friendship blossomed there over a few beers.
All of the actors were local patrons which just adds to the allure of the whole thing. It’s so simple but so effective and man I’d love to pull up a barstool at Charlie’s and make some new friends.
Teague spoke to CNN about making the advertisement:
“There’s often a lot of loneliness at Christmas time…and so the story was about kindness.
It was about spreading love and being aware that there are people out there who are on their own at Christmas time that don’t find it a magical time of the year and find it quite lonely.
It’s about being a friend and the dog sort of represents a person making the first move to go over to speak to somebody and the impact that can make to their day.”
After the ad went viral online, Charlie’s decided to create a GoFundMe page to raise money for AgeNI, a charity to support needy elderly residents in Northern Ireland.
If nothing else, let this be a reminder to do something nice for people around you who may not have a lot of friends and family around them anymore. Just a phone call or a quick visit can mean more to them than you’d imagine.
