Realistic Roach Commercial Bugs Viewers

A new TV commercial for Orkin Pest Control is a bit too realistic for some viewers.

The commercial features what looks like a normal ad for fabric softener with a cockroach crawling across the screen. A few seconds later, an Orkin man appears to spray the bug.

But some viewers have damaged their television sets trying to get rid of what they think is the real roach on their set. Two viewers even asked the company to repair sets that they damaged when they hurled objects at the bug.

"Apparently, when you're sitting in your darkened den it seems pretty real," Michael Lollis, executive creative director at the Atlanta office of J. Walter Thompson, told reporters. The ad agency created the ads, titled "Fake Out," which aired mostly at night, on March 1 in 90 percent of the country.

Lollis said the spot required "lots of little technical tricks." The creators added a slight glow around the edge of the bug so it would appear to be sitting on the screen.

Orkin and the ad agency have received dozens of calls from people who reported being frightened, amused or both by the commercial.

Matt, from Tallahassee, Fla., wrote to Orkin, saying he had just stepped from the shower when he saw the roach on his TV set.

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"I immediately snatched my towel off and proceeded to snap the roach with the towel," he wrote. "He did not die or even get knocked off the TV. I thought it was SuperRoach or something. Then to realize that it was just a commercial, well, I felt dumb. But I got a great laugh out of it."

A woman from Greensboro, Md., said she woke up two neighbors late at night to come to her house to hunt and kill the roach. One of the neighbors quickly figured out that the bug was from the commercial.

"I felt really stupid for getting my neighbors out of bed in the middle of the night," she said. "You really got me!"

An irate Tampa, Fla., woman who tried to kill the roach by tossing a motorcycle helmet at it and instead broke her TV set demanded that Atlanta-based Orkin buy her a new one.

Another man said his set was damaged after he threw a shoe at it.

The company says, sorry, the Orkin Man doesn't do TV repair.

"Both of them were very startled and they wanted us to fix their TVs, but that's not going to happen, I'm afraid," Orkin spokeswoman Martha May said.

The success of the commercial has prompted Orkin's public relations department to tailor another promotion around the commercial -- the "Orkin Got Me" contest, with the winner of a random drawing receiving a new television. Postcard or e-mail entries are due by April 30.