K-fee commercials

File:K-fee auto.jpg

A screenshot from the K-fee auto commercial.

K-fee advertisements

K-fee television advertisements imitate prank flash animations (also known as screamers) intending to scare the viewer. One such TV ad is known as K-fee Auto. 

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 scene very briefly, scaring the viewer. The commercial fades to black, showing the slogan: "So wach warst du noch nie." translated "You have never been as wide awake as this." and after some time shows the product with the caption "Kaffee in hohen dosen" (which is a pun, meaning both "coffee in high doses" as well as "coffee in tall cans"). In the English version of the ad, the slogan reads "Ever been so wide awake?".

Complaints

These adverts have been heavily criticized for their content and manyfeel that the advert is very uncommercial and upsetting, though its shocking visual is built to energize the viewers and keep them alert. 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 is displayed before the advert plays, informing any young children, individuals who are easily scared and people with heart conditions or autism to not view the footage. When this is not shown, it leaves any individual to be deceived.

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 a different font/size. 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) that never aired; 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.

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 Halloween 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.

Other K-fee ads

In the normal ads, only the zombie and gargoyle are used. In all of the commercials, the same scream is used.

Commercials featuring the gargoyle

• Beach 1: This depicts two lovers on a beach about to kiss, and just as they do, 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.

Commercials featuring the zombie

• 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.