Singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan has become known as much for her efforts to raise awareness of abandoned and abused animals for the ASPCA as for her music. Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort and parent company MNTN are using that notoriety to their advantage in a new ad for Bolt, a one-click checkout tech company.
In the ad, McLachlan sits on a couch and launches into a speech, much like her heart-wrenching ASPCA spots, calling attention to the problem of abandoned online shopping carts. She states up front, “70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned at the checkout page, victims of a cruel and exhausting checkout process.” She then drives home the point that there are way too many questions about billing and shipping addresses, and pleads for people to be the answer to these innocent carts, whose dreams are crushed by all those questions.
The treacly background music concludes with an overwrought voice singing about Bolt’s one-click shopping option—and claiming “we got Sarah f*%king McLachlan.” Just try to get the musical tag out of your head after listening.
Bolt is not only helping raise awareness of abandoned carts, but animals as well, which is most likely how they landed McLachlan for the spot. Bolt has made a $50,000 donation to the ASPCA and has launched Bolt.com/carts, where animal lovers can buy discounted “Rescue Cart“ merchandise. Every item is under $1 with discount code “AbandonedCarts.” For each item purchased, Bolt will donate $10 to the ASPCA, up to an additional $50,000.
Bolt is a MNTN client and worked with Maximum Effort through the newly launched Creative-as-a-Subscription (CaaS) service, a creative offering that allows brands to buy media and creative together.