K-fee commercials

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K-fee advertisements
In 2005, German caffeine company K-fee released nine 20-second long TV adverts as part of their Wide Awake campaign for their coffee drink. These adverts have been heavily criticized for their content and many feel that the advert is very uncommercial and upsetting, though its shocking visual is built to simulate the effect that the product has on the viewer.

The ads consist of a peaceful scene, such as a car driving down a grassy hillside to soothing music. However, at some point in the ad, the scene gets briefly interrupted by either a zombie or a gargoyle screaming at the camera, followed by the company's slogan and the product.

The K-fee company received a lot of complaints about viewers getting heart attacks and young children getting startled. Soon after that, the ads stopped being aired on TV. On some occasions, a warning message was displayed before the advert played, informing any young children, individuals who are easily scared and people with heart conditions to not view the footage.

Each advert had two versions: a German version and an English version, with the captions at the end in the respective language.

An episode of 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' featured a segment where the audience and Jay reacted to the Auto variant of the advert. It was hosted on K-fee's official website back in 2005 along with the adverts themselves.

The adverts


 Adverts featuring the zombie 
 * Car: The commercial begins with a relaxing scene of a white car driving down a grassy hillside to soothing music. When the car passes behind a large tree, the camera follows. When it pans off the tree, the car is gone. Then, a zombie with a frightening scream then suddenly pops into the scenevery briefly, scaring the viewer.
 * Fishing: This shows a man fishing, and not long afterwards the zombie appears, surprisingly not looking directly into the camera as he screams.
 * Yoga: This shows a person practicing yoga on a cliff, and as soon as the person lifts his hand, the zombie seemingly appears out of nowhere, screaming. His face is obscured by the dark. This is probably the scariest of all ads.
 * Meadow: A view over a field is shown, and the camera stops moving at a certain point. Not long after, the zombie shows up from the left side of the screen and screams.
 * Surfing: This is a far away view of a man going to the ocean to go surfing. Then the zombie appears from the right side of the screen and screams. This also seems to use the same footage of the zombie that's used in K-fee auto.

 Adverts featuring the gargoyle 
 * Beach 1: This depicts two lovers on a beach about to kiss, and just as they're about to, the gargoyle jumps up screaming from the bottom of the screen, blocking the view, with blood dripping from his mouth.
 * Beach 2: This shows a relaxing scene of a boardwalk near a beach, when the gargoyle appears upside-down and screams.
 * Buddha: This depicts a woman meditating near a Buddha statue, when the gargoyle jumps up screaming. His face is so close to the camera that it is out of focus.
 * Golf: A man is shown golfing from far away, when the gargoyle appears upside-down and screams.

Credits

 * Director: Kai Sehr
 * Producer: Kai Stoecker
 * Advertising Agency: Jung von Matt (Hamburg, Germany)
 * Creative Directors: Costantin Kaloff, Ove Gley
 * Art Director: Frank Aldorf
 * Production Company: Cobblestone Filmproduktion
 * Sound Design: Doublehead
 * Post Production: Deli Pictures
 * Copywriters: Daniel Frericks, Eskil Puhl
 * Aired on the following channels: ProSieben, Kabel Eins, Sat 1

Parodies
On the Internet, an alternate ending shows, instead of the product and the slogan, the text: "Now...Go Change Your Shorts And Get Back To Work!" in Arial Black instead of the normal ending. Other manifestations of this ad include being sent as part of a chain-mail which supposedly depicts a ghost appearing during the filming of a television ad (sometimes from Great Britain); the viewer is instructed to follow the car closely, as a "mist" is supposed to appear next to the car at some point. The "mist", of course, never does appear, and the commercial plays out as described above, much to the chagrin of the viewer.

Alternate version
In January 2006, K-fee released new commercials for their line of Latte macchiato drinks that parodied their own prank flash-style commercials. Using the footage from three of K-fee's most popular commercials (Auto, Beach, and Golf), the company replaced the frightening image of a zombie or gargoyle at the end of the ad with a man in ordinary clothes, a man in a Gorilla mask, or a man in a bear mascot costume appearing slowly and saying "boo" or "bwa-ha-ha", followed by the text "Jetzt auch mit weniger Koffein" (which translates as "Now also with less caffeine") and an image of a Latte Macchiato bottle.

The Amazing World of Gumball
In the Cartoon Network animated series The Amazing World of Gumball, the episode named "The Internet", parodies the K-fee advertisements. In one scene, Gumball and Darwin appear randomly browsing the web while watching videos. Among these videos, they come across what is implied to be the K-fee Car ad.

Gumball watches the video, commenting on the white car driving through the hills and staring closely at the screen, when suddenly the loud scream is heard, causing him to have an intense reaction which gets recorded and posted to the web. The rest of the episode involves Gumball trying to get rid of the video about his reaction, which has given him unwanted fame.

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Gallery

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Videos

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Links
NOTE : The following videos contain screamers.

English

 * Car: youtube.com/watch?v=YuHh3lsjZko
 * Fishing: youtube.com/watch?v=HGTsojFNm1s
 * Buddha: youtube.com/watch?v=378At8DUXzE
 * Golf: youtube.com/watch?v=4MC9kB5z7SE
 * Beach: youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3CMtrOyQA
 * Meadow: youtube.com/watch?v=XwGJIU8eFUM
 * Yoga: youtube.com/watch?v=C1GzUfmFMmk
 * Surfing: youtube.com/watch?v=-JUbW0c885Q
 * Boardwalk: youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXh0924qE

German
Soft versions (2006)
 * Car: youtube.com/watch?v=OmgdJd6-jwE
 * Fishing: youtube.com/watch?v=5L5nLvPsb38
 * Buddha: youtube.com/watch?v=n6iOXV_fHTY
 * Golf: youtube.com/watch?v=px_cmWspfOU
 * Beach: youtube.com/watch?v=hAlz3-xtkTY
 * Meadow: youtube.com/watch?v=cR-hHVEw3r8
 * Yoga: youtube.com/watch?v=4uan6yzpQ2o
 * Surfing: youtube.com/watch?v=erSh4x6VF8E
 * Boardwalk: youtube.com/watch?v=aKgl9A_hsT8

NOTE : The following videos do not contain screamers.
 * Car: youtube.com/Z8N0QiHc43M
 * Beach: youtube.com/EdZuqmi7-5M
 * Golf: youtube.com/31z8xaYDONA


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Languages
This article is available in multiple languages.
 * Français (French) — Publicités K-fee
 * Português (Portuguese) — Comerciais K-fee