Do not attempt

Did you watch any TV over the weekend?

Of course you did. We all did. And please no comments along the lines of 'I don't even have a TV' or 'I only stream Hulu to my iPad'. If you are one of those people, you are still the outlier, still the exception, still kind of annoying.

So over the weekend I caught a new (I think new) commercial from the good folks over at Jeep. The spot (embedded below, email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), was one of those artsy kinds, with lots of quick cut scenes of people out and about in the woods or on trails or climbing up things, a soundtrack of an old Bob Dylan song with his typical incomprehensible lyrics, and an overall message of 'When you were young, you could do anything, be anything, go anywhere. Now you are older and you think you can't do all the crazy, adventurous, exciting things you used to do, (or wanted to do, but never got around to them before you took a boring office job, signed on for a (too big) mortgage, and became 'responsible.' But you still can do these things, well, if you drive one of these cool, off-road capable but probably won't see any terrain more dangerous than the mall parking lot on Black Friday, new Jeeps!

It actually is a decent commercial as these things go, and in its final, dramatic, inspirational image we see someone about to embark on a base jump, leaping off a canyon or ridge of some kind, about to hurl his or her mini-parachute in the air that will ostensibly help guide them down to safety below. The voice over reminds us that 'You can still throw yourself at the world head first again' while we see from behind this amazingly exciting, probably dangerous, and likely something 99% of us would never try, leap off of a perfectly good mountain.

But as we watch that tremendous leap of faith and adrenaline and courage, and internalize that since we are listening to an old, obscure Bob Dylan track that this must be cool, a tiny disclaimer appears on the screen. 

Do not attempt.

No, this amazingly exciting (potential) life and set of adventures we portray in our Jeep commerical, they aren't really meant for you to try. (We really just want you to buy a Jeep. And be careful.).

And we don't want to be held responsible just in case anyone watches our little minute and one second of inspiration and actually thinks that yes, they can crawl out of their cubicle and climb mountains, walk around shirtless, and stare pensively into campfires.

And yes, there are lawyers somewhere that told us we have to place Do not attempt right over the images just in case someone out there is crazy enough to Attempt and ends up lying in a broken heap at the bottom of the valley.

What's the point of all this?

As usual, there is not much of one.

Except to think that maybe on some if not all of the 10,249 articles that will be published today telling you how to better engage your employees, or how to manage people, or to find and recruit 'top talent' that at least some of them should come with the same disclaimer.

Do not attempt.

Have a great week!