Exec eats off floor to sell vacuum cleaner
Are you floored? Bissell Canada/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
We all have to eat, well, dirt, once in a while.
It's inadvertent. Nothing is ever quite as clean as we hope.
Which of us, however, would voluntarily risk eating dirt in order to sell a vacuum cleaner? May I present Ravi Dalchand, brand manager for Bissell Canada.
He is so confident that his company's Symphony All-In-One vacuum cleaner wipes away 99.9 percent of all known germs and bacteria that he went where few would dare to break bread.
In a video posted (not posthumously, I hope) by Bissell Canada to YouTube, Dalchand is seen on a platform of the Toronto subway posing as (and with) a cleaner.
He vacuums an area. Then, he grabs his lunch of indeterminate consistency (it could be pasta) and slaps it onto the area he's just cleaned. Yes, right there on the floor.
Next, he does what all polite brand managers do. He attaches a napkin beneath his chin. He grabs a fork, carefully secreted in the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
Then he gets down on one knee and eats off the floor.
Other people on the platform show their admiration by covering their mouths and gagging. Dalchand, however, brings forth some bread and begins to wipe the sauce (could it be marinara?) that remains on the floor.
More Technically Incorrect
To the background music of more groaning and intestinal despair, Dalchand stares into the camera and says he stands "100 percent behind this product."
This can't all be as real as it seems, can it? Well, the Huffington Post informs me that this subway station is closed to the public. One might conclude, therefore, that the bystanders were paid to stand by.
Still, I worried that, in the corporate world, it may be that Dalchand felt this was the best way to get a promotion. However, a spokeswoman for Bissell told me that he absolutely ate up this idea and volunteered in a heartbeat.
She also said: "Ravi is alive. He is doing so well, he went on vacation."
The Symphony All-In-One vacuum cleaner apparently vacuums and steams simultaneously. All you need is water.
I wonder whether Dalchand needed something a little stronger than water after his attempt to create, at the very least, a future for himself on QVC.
Update, 11:43 a.m. PT: Adds comment from Bissell.
