Nivea Stress Protect ambush

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Hidden Camera and worse for Nivea Stress Protect Ad victims.

How easy was it for you to imagine yourself in the position of those people?  I don’t think that I would have been as calm.  How about you?  Would you have gotten up and changed clothes?  Asked to see the newspaper?  Made a quick trip to the lavatory to cut your hair off?

The entire thing was very reminiscent of the scams that the Mission Impossible team would pull on their marks.  The interception of the technology to produce a paper, make an announcement, hijack the screen, are all pretty easy when you think about it.  The actors placed all around the mark really made it seem believable as well.

Nivea Stress Protect would have to be like cauterizing the armpits.

Some how the phrase “sweating bullets” seems a bit unfortunate to apply to an airport situation…  If “the guilty flee where no man pursueth”, do the guiltless just sit all calm and relaxed?  Somehow, when the security guys came over I’d be thinking flee first, ask questions later.  Knowing all the while that that was crazy thinking.  Yep, stressed for sure.

So would Nivea Stress Protect be overkill for normal stress?

Isn’t that a problem with over hyping something, that it would seem to no longer apply to the ordinary if not mundane stressors of daily life?  Do products like Nivea Stress Protect live up to the hype of such ad campaigns?  Sort of the “Axe” phenomena, where the benefits promised by the ad have little relation to reality.

Well I feel that some of these reality hidden camera scenarios are a bit cruel these days.  I may be looking through rose colored glasses, but the old “smile, you’re on candid camera” show was a far cry from a show like “Scare Tactics”.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on elaborate set up situations like this Nivea Stress Protect ad?  What would you do and how would you take it once it was over?  Please comment and share to find out what others you know would do!