Watch a Disembodied Arnold Schwarzenegger Head Star in the Weirdest Commercial Ever
Did you buy payment protection insurance in the United Kingdom between the years of 1990 and 2010? Well then the disembodied animatronic head of Arnold Schwarzenegger on a tiny remote-controlled tank tread wants you to file a claim about it.
(Your guess why is as good as mine.)
I’m just going by what the The New York Times tells me. I had no idea what payment protection insurance (or “P.P.I.”) was, so I’ll just let them explain it.
The campaign centers on the misselling of a product known as P.P.I. Introduced more than two decades ago, P.P.I. was supposed to give consumers, and lenders, a bit of peace of mind by covering loan repayments if a person could no longer work because of an accident, illness or disability, or if they died. But regulators later determined that the insurance product was often improperly sold to people who did not need it, or could not qualify to use the insurance. Six years ago, the authorities took the banking industry to court.
According to the Times, the lenders agreed to settle and have repaid about “$35 billion to customers.” The final deadline to submit claims is August 29, 2019, hence the start of a campaign to educate the public. And for some reason, that translated to a disembodied animatronic Arnold Schwarzenegger head screaming “DO IT NOW!” at people.
Look, I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the British financial system, or of the British advertising industry, which, on the basis of this ad, is really operating on an entirely different level than its American counterpart. All I know is I want that animatronic Arnold head. I want it, and I want to use it to pester my wife and small child. “PUT DUH COOKIE DOWN! GET TO DUH CHOPPAH! I’M A POLICE OFFICUH!” And so on. It would probably end in my divorce, but it would be worth it.