In a tongue-in-cheek post, Clay Allsop of Propeller offers that Facebook’s nonsensical Like A Chair video campaign is a parody of our own ambivalent attitude toward The Social Network. He states:

What bothers me is how we’re okay with this; that the tragedy of the video is the comical absurdity of the “Chair” analogy and not the deeper tragedy that any company is trying to connect with us like this at all. How one minute we’re being pitched about Facebook addressing the human condition, and the next we’re advertised to about Farmville.

And he asks:

Really, what other company has tried to explicitly associate its product with solving existential loneliness?

Not many, Clay but there is one notable example, WD & HO Wills’ disastrous launch of a new tobacco brand, ‘You’re Never Alone With A Strand’

This legendary TV spot and print campaign portrayed Frank Sinatra lookalike, Terence Brooks, as an angst-ridden everyman pacing the streets of London to the ‘Lonely Man Theme‘ and seeking solace in the smooth and fulsome flavour of a Strand cigarette.

Though the public identified with the late-night imagery (and the backing track, which shot up the charts) the campaign was a failure. Nobody wanted to buy a product associated with a loser.

Perhaps, in time, we’ll find that Facebook is like tobacco?

Image: Imperial Tobacco