ICA supermarket soap opera pokes at peoples prejudice with Jerry, the down's syndrome trainee

KING advertising agency and ICA supermarkets have had a long-lasting relationship where new commercials in the soap opera story are produced each month, that both manage to highlight the specials of the week and entertain the audience. People follow the ICA story the way you'd follow any soap opera (like my mom who calls me when a new ad is on asking if I've seen it yet).

Most recently, ICA decided to promote tolerance by shaking up people's mindsets about people with down syndrome. The background for these films is the project "we can do more" which has a goal to employ 1000 disabled people in the ICA stores around the country. They hired actor Mats Melin, who has down's syndrome, to play "Jerry the trainee" in a series of ads.

Mats works as an actor at Glada Hudik theatre and quickly became a national phenomenon in Sweden. In each one of the ads, Jerry has the upper hand over the other characters.

Let's begin with the introduction of Jerry.

ICA - Jerry 1 - Eng. sub. (2009) :30 (Sweden)
 

In the second ad, Stig the boss asks Ulf to show Jerry the ropes. Jerry and Stig conclude that Ulf can't be that bright. (The actor Paul Tilly's eyes are brighter than the light blue summer sky though, I rode a train from Stockholm to Malmö next to him and had the most difficult time trying to stop staring at the poor guy)

ICA - Jerry 2 Eng. Sub. - (2009) :30 (Sweden)
 

In the third ad, Jerry tricks Ulf, whom we've already concluded a long time ago, isn't the sharpest tool in the box.

ICA - Jerry 3 Eng. Sub. - (2009) :30 (Sweden)

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 5 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.
Margaret Osborne's picture

I’m in Stockholm regularly as my son ( from UK) lives here. I absolutely cant get enough of Mats on the ICA ads. He is a great actor!!