The hint of the insatiable dragon
Following BBVA's TV takeover bid for Banc Sabadell, attempting to convince its shareholders through commercials, the Catalan bank appears to have taken advantage of the Sant Jordi holiday to make a comeback with a hint of caution.
For days now, a friendly-looking black dragon has been appearing on our screens. A very expressive female voice, using the intonation of someone enthusiastically telling a children's story, announces: "It's April again. Here comes the insatiable dragon. If we kill it, it seems never to learn. What should we do to make it understand?" Taking advantage of the popularity of the legend of Saint George, it plays with a context that is elided. So much so that, rather than an innocent story, the story ends up seeming like a hint where we must read between the lines and extract another meaning. The viewer inevitably constructs a parallel between the dragon that eats people and BBVA and its voracity to devour other entities.
If Banco Sabadell asks us "What do we do with the dragon?" it seems as if they're consulting us about what they should do with the threat of BBVA. An "insatiable" BBVA that, despite their insistence (including the commercials), "seems not to learn." And then they ask themselves: "What should we do to make him understand?"
The answer can be found on the internet, where the campaign is expanded with a little song that, if you listen to it, you've drunk oil: the refrain will become ingrained in your brain and you'll spend hours humming it. This is one of the dangers of advertising, which, when you least expect it, has the ability to infiltrate your memory and stay with you forever. In the musical ad that follows the friendly dragon, several actors and actresses stand in front of a microphone and sing a childish little song. They define the dragon's attitude as "very unfriendly" and, faced with the mission of finding ways to make it understand that it cannot act in accordance with its devouring inclination, they pose the question: "What if we replace the legend with a good reprimand?" The musician Manu Guix, for example, sings: "If we want the dragon to learn, I know a reprimand: let's make it write a thousand times that people are not eaten." The parallel continues to work perfectly. Actress and singer Carol Rovira suggests more sadistic options: "Take it dancing sardanas in high heels." Here we can infer a sly intention to subject the dragon to a malicious immersion in Catalan identity.
In the end, appealing to the bank's traditional slogan—"Your power is the power to choose"—they invite the viewer (or the hypothetical shareholders of Banc Sabadell) to a new choice: "You choose the end of this illustrious animal." This "illustrious animal" even seems like a funny euphemism for the Basque bank, using the excuse that it's Saint George's Day. A very discreet and elegant way to pull out the spear and remind everyone of their intentions to slay the beast.