A 30-second commercial by Amazon promoting itself as a supporter of small businesses has really got a lot of class – but maybe not in the way the multinational tech company intended.
The ad, which has been viewed on YouTube more than a million times since Oct. 5, and on television, features a six-year-old photo of the wood shop classroom at Gibsons’ Elphinstone Secondary School.
Subtitles about the company’s contributions to entrepreneurialism fade onto the screen as a camera pans across the empty shop class and its lights flicker on. A voice calls out hello. Another responds.
The curiosity came to the attention of School District No. 46 superintendent Patrick Bocking early this month, after the school’s principal noticed the commercial while watching news on television.
After contacting Amazon the mystery was solved. A photographer was given permission to shoot images inside the school for stock footage purposes, said Bocking.
By coincidence, the two voices and a name used in the ad match those of the school’s shop class teacher and another district employee, but they were added in post-production.
“It’s just an interesting, odd thing,” said Bocking. “This high school in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast, they found this somewhere and they are using it to promote this.”
While passing a high school classroom off as a small business may not be the most transparent business practice, it doesn’t break any rules.
Amazon told Coast Reporter the image was licensed from Getty Images, a stock image website – a standard practice in advertising – and the image was listed as an “empty wood shop” without reference to the school.
Since no children or people appear in the image, Bocking said the district has no problem with its use. “It’s just super weird,” he said.
