If you’ve been watching Channel 4 recently and been slightly disturbed by the cybernetic commercials for Persona Synthetics, you probable did a similar double take to us as it tried to flog you a fully functioning cyborg as the next generation of home help technology. Luckily for all humanity, it’s a fake commercial that they’ve created as a clever advert for their new sci-fi drama show, Humans, which features household robots that look remarkably like us.
It’s been a while since we last saw this kind of freakout concept work as well as it has in the ad, but it builds on a long legacy of similar stunts that have managed to shock people out of their commercial haze to actually pay attention to the mentalness that’s taking place. It’s got a lot to thank Orson Welles for, as he was the master of this kind of attention highjacking tactic. At the age of 24 he rocked the airwaves of an American radio station by directing and narrating an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War Of The World that made it sound like a series of live news broadcasts about an actual alien invasion.
In a similar way, but with perhaps a little less fleeting, localised hysteria, the commercial for Humans managed to make many of us ask what just happened when we first watched them. It was only by searching for Persona Synthetics online that it became clear that it was all a smart stunt to get people to take more notice of the upcoming TV show, and in all fairness it’s done a pretty good job of doing just that. For anyone that hasn’t been lucky enough to see the commercials, we’ve posted the video below, but it doesn’t do the sensation of it randomly appearing in the middle of a standard commercial break.
It wasn’t just the television commercials that messed with people’s minds, as the marketing team behind the show also managed to open a new pop-up shop on London’s Regent St, telling passers by that they will soon be able to by their own synthetic human at the soon to open Regent St store. You can see pictures of the stunt shopfront above, along with a few of the passers by stopping to see what the craziness was all about.
Humans will be airing on Channel 4 later this summer, having been adapted from the Norwegian sci-fi drama hit Real Humans, which takes place in an alternative not too distant future in which high-class humanoid workers have become commercially available. The UK show takes place in an imagined version of our present day where the same robotic simulates called Synths have started to arrive in households throughout the country.
The story takes centres on the lives of a busy and aspirational suburban family that saves up the cash for a reconditioned Synth called Anita in the hopes that she’ll improve their lives immeasurably. However, the beautiful life-like robot also brings significant consequences to the family and they face the difficulties, as well as the benefits of having a cybernetic maid.
