I loved his kitchy ads that always played on CTV during The Flash. His ads lack the refine of a large conglomerate like Toyotathon. They don't have the solemnness of a small home business trying to convince you to take a chance on them. They even lack any sense of inhibition. At times you wonder if they're even related to a business.
More a piece of performance art. Maybe even just a geriatric business owner who doesn't understand the word 'modesty'.
But it's really a mirror—a reflection of our values. In TV we package real feelings behind layers of abstraction, veneer, and then wrap it in a bowtie and ask you to figure out what it "really means". The artistic merit of an ad, is only in the form, with no substance at all.
Oliver's Jewelery is leaking substance out the WAZOO! His kitchy ads are a window into what we envision about being rich. It's contempt for being a square, and unashamedly emotional. It has a sincerity, charm, and authenticity that's so ridiculously magnetic, a world without it is a world dimmer.
As cable TV escaped my daily ritual, so did my sporadic run-ins with the CASH MAN! But luckily, one opportune time, I was watching Youtube on my TV when I chanced upon an older, greyer, but also the evergreen energetic, Oliver.
This man isn't Toronto, we're cold and destitute, he's fiery and bold. But without him, our entire system would crumble. We need exhausts of our emotionality, and Oliver is that vital dung-beetle of theatrics that Toronto needed, a crucial member of the ecosystem. Perhaps less glamorous than the lion, the deer, or even the baobab, but no less integral.