How advertisers are selling life after covid

People are eager for lockdown to end - and so are ad agencies

A screengrab from the US advertisement for Extra chewing gum - promising some sort of gigantic post-Covid afterparty

The first thing you see, in what must be among the best TV ads of the season, is tumbleweed rolling where no tumbleweed should roll, in the middle of a city street edged with offices and apartments. But then you realize it is largely made up of disposable masks, and the street is howlingly empty. A title card reads, “Sometime in the not too distant future.” 

In one apartment, an alarm-clock radio rouses a bedraggled man who looks the way bad breath smells. “Good morning, folks, this is W.G.U.M., your stay-at-home radio station.” A piano tinkles hopefully. “And this just in! We! Are! Back! We can see people again! How ’bout that? I can’t believe it! ... I can’t believe it!”