seven deADly sins

In this progressive ad, a way for you to do your grocery shopping online is presented through the new app Instacart. You simply select what you want, and then your personal shopper goes and gets everything you ordered, just to deliver it at your doorstep.

Instacart is promoted in this commercial through a meet-cute, where a girl puts off her grocery shopping to stay in a taxi and talk to a cute boy. While she is making him laugh, she is also swiping through the food sections on her phone and clicking money out of her bank account. But in the end, she gets a date with a stranger who seems somewhat nice, and that is worth so much more than valuable time and money right?

According to the seven deadly sins, that would be wrong.

First of all, putting off daily routines for other, more pleasurable things is a clear trait of being a sloth. The girl in the ad presents this as she takes a shortcut that uses both less time and less energy. Also, gluttony is shown as the app allows its users to easily tap on images in order to get all the food they want without physically seeing how much food they are actually buying. This would lead to people buying more food, and therefore spending more money, then they actually need to. The idea of indulging in an excess amount of goods is what the deadly sin of gluttony is all about.

In addition to this, lust is also present in the commercial. This is seen as the girl puts off her daily routines very quickly for a romantic connection, which shows that her romantic desires have a much bigger priority to her when compared to more useful tasks. This feeling appears to be reciprocated by the man in the ad as he wastes valuable time and energy just to walk her all the way back to her home, proving that he too has character traits of lust.

I believe that the audience for this ad is most likely millennials who enjoy the idea of luxury. The actors in this commercial were around the same age that millennials would be at today, and the ability to effectively use technology, what the ad is centered on, is a defining trait of this generation. Also, millennials are widely known for traits that involve being lazy or slacking on tasks that previous generations deemed as very important, such as working hard and giving back to others. This goes well with this commercial, as it promotes laziness and putting off daily routines for pleasure.

The idea of an audience that not only likes the idea of having luxeries but also has enough money to afford them makes sense because anyone using the Instacart app would have to have enough money to not only afford a large range of items but also to pay an additional fee for someone to shop and deliver all of the goods to you. The concept of having another person do minuscule tasks for you has been a way of promoting one’s self-esteem for a long time, as it creates superior emotions to those working for you like servants. In addition to this, by having other people complete this mundane task for someone, it can make this person feel as though their time, and therefore they, are more valuable.

Lastly, I think that it is important to note that the concept of the seven deadly sins (through gluttony, sloth, and lust) isn’t just relevant to the actors in this ad. The audience I described above could also have feelings of one of the seven deadly sins provoked in watching this ad: envy.

Studies show that the generation of millennials has a harder time meeting significant others, as social media has taken over almost all of their interactions with people their age. Therefore, the audience that could be classified as more lonely could feel envious of the people in Instacart’s ad, as they would desire a fairytale meet-cute like the one seen in this video. The creators of this ad most certainly have this in mind, as this desire to become more like the characters in an advertisement could contribute to a person being more willing to purchase the product.

However, these feelings are unreliable because the scene is obviously fake and unrealistic (who even drives around in a taxi when you can have your own private uber??). All in all, I think that the main takeaway is to not be fooled by the age-old tricks of humanity, and to save your money and time for products and tasks that actually matter.