A new gun safety PSA from Evolve — a provocative offshoot of Saatchi & Saatchi — drives home a point about its core message in a very attention grabbing way. (Read: with noisy sex toys.)
The clip, titled “Evolve — Playthings,” is not the first humorous look from the campaign about a very serious issue. And given the contentious nature of gun rights and American laws in the current political climate, this seems like one message ad with which few will be able to disagree at all.
Earlier this year, Evolve launched a campaign urging gun owners not to “be a dumbass,” including a silly video about the Founding Fathers failing to codify gun safety tenets because they were “common sense.”
The campaign is preserved on the group’s YouTube page in a header graphic that reads “it’s the right to bear arms, not the right to be a dumbass,” and the newer video makes the point in a far more modern way.
In it, two moms are greeting one another at the conclusion of what we are meant to understand was a playdate. As they awkwardly make conversation, in the background, two boys in paper hats swordfight, as children are wont to do.
The moms individually attempt to reign the kids in as they scamper about noisily, a blur of motion spilling from the front entryway to the door.
And as the kids roughhouse their way through it and onto the front path (and into the light) it’s obvious what they’re swordfighting with — massive dildos, vibrating in the sunlight. (Or maybe vibrators, the point is, totes embarrassing.)
The ad ends with an extended shot of the women lost for words and horrified, and it cuts to the “Evolve” logo — which buzzes twice to hammer home the point. Then the voiceover reminds us that if children can find something, they will play with it, guns or jelly molds of a phallus.
The earlier ad was not as risque, but also definitely was humorous:
“It’s common sense, I mean like, duh, nobody’s gonna be THAT dumb!”
At the time Rebecca Bond, Co-Founder of Evolve commented :
“Safety is not a side. Gun owners and non-gun owners live with guns in this country, and we should all be able to have a collaborative conversation about how to think about gun safety… Humor can be a gateway to taking away the defensiveness that is the legacy of these discussions. We hope to put this conversation on the kitchen table and start talking about it.”
Watch the new Evolve gun safety PSA, above.