Alex Reid

I’m pleasantly surprised that one company, Pepsi, took a minute during the busiest rush of American television to pay homage to what is truly golden: silence.

Pepsi paid upwards of $5 million to show this silent and closed captioned 60-second ad during the Super Bowl show on Fox this past Sunday.

The ad replays an old joke in the deaf community in which two guys try to find the home of their friend Bob so they can watch the game together. It’s dark in the street and they can’t remember which number Bob lives at. The problem is solved by laying on the car horn. Bob, their deaf friend, can not hear the horn and so he’s the only one in the street to not turn his lights on in response.

This isn’t just the most expensive PSA ever, all three guys in the commercial are all Pepsi employees. Lost guys Brian Dowling and Darren Therriault work for Frito-Lay in Arizona and for Pepsi in Chicago, respectively. Bob is played by Clay Broussard, another Pepsi employee who proposed the ad idea. BBDO worked on the ad pro bono.

Bravo to Pepsi for enlightening 100 million Americans in one minute.