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In late summer 2017, several unreliable web sites published identical reports alleging that the makers of a car commercial reluctantly decided never to air the ad because of a ghostly apparition the crew accidentally captured on film: For anyone unable (or unwilling) to watch the video, it consists of a long preamble reiterating the story above, followed by about 20 seconds of footage showing a vehicle navigating along a winding roadway in a bucolic setting, followed by (spoiler alert!) a still shot of a frightening, zombie-like face accompanied by a loud, high-pitched scream, capped off by a title card reading: Now ... go change your shorts and get back to work! In short, it's a prank, and it's a prank that works quite well thanks to the misdirection of the false preamble. What none of the web sites on which the video clip has appeared discloses, however, is that it's an ever-so-slightly altered version of a real commercial that actually did air on European television networks in April 2005 (when it was also teased to American viewers via The Tonight Show with Jay Leno). Here is the original version, which advertised not a vehicle, but a caffeinated energy drink called K-fee: The slogan and basic concept were used in a series of award-winning TV, Internet, and radio spots produced by the Hamburg marketing firm Jung von Matt for K-fee in 2004. All featured the same screamer or jump scare ending (all nine of the original television spots can be viewed in one sitting here). The campaign was so successful that it was followed up a year later with milder, self-parodying versions of the ads featuring the reworked tagline, Jetzt auch mit weniger Koffein (Now also with less caffeine):
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