All Work And No Play Makes This a Great Ad

Company: Bing
Aired: November 5, 2009
Channel: CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, ESPN, TBS
Appeal: Parody, Humor

This commercial gave me chills. Lets just say I will never walk the hallway of a hotel again without picturing those two twin girls standing at the end of the corridor. I’m serious! I first watched The Shining with my family when I was nine and was terrified. Maybe the fact that my father resembles Jack Nicholson and would burst into my room screaming, “Here’s Johnny!” Yeah, that definitely had something to do with it.


For all you Google loyalists, Bing is a search engine similar to Google from Microsoft. Bing first broke out onto the internet scene on June 3, 2009. The company has already invested $80 to $100 million into their advertising campaign. The ads never mention their competitors by name but simply try and convince the viewer to switch over by claiming Bing does a better job of finding more relevant, higher quality results at a faster pace. I’ve come across many of their television ads before but their spoof on The Shining is hands down my favorite.

The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film based on the book written by legendary author Stephen King. The film is about writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) accepting the caretaker job of an extremely isolated hotel during the winter months. His son Danny (Danny Lloyd) has psychic abilities and is able to see ghosts from the past. A combination of cabin fever and supernatural events inside the haunted hotel eventually get the best of Jack. In this state of complete madness he attempts to murder his wife and son. Here is the Bing parody on this classic film.



This ad only appeals to people who have either seen the film or know enough about it to distinguish it as a spoof. It begins with a distant shot of the entire hotel as creepy music plays in background. We are then taken inside to the hotel main lobby, which looks identical to the set from the movie. The little boy on the tricycle also bears a striking resemblance to the actor who played Danny. He does his best “Redrum” impression and suggests to his mother to, “use Bing.” The twin girls in matching dresses appear along with Lloyd the bartender. The highlight of the entire thirty-second spot is obviously the end when the husband smashes through the door and exclaims, “Hey Hun! They got a maze out back!” This is the most famous scene from the movie and was a perfect way to end the commercial. Here is that famous clip which has petrified me for the past decade!