Ravi Dalchand, senior brand manager at Bissell Canada, will stop at nothing to demonstrate just how great his company’s new steam vacuum cleaner is. Believe it or not,  he has actually eaten pasta off the floor of a busy subway station, after cleaning it with the vacuum.

The event in question took place at Toronto’s Bloor subway station (one of the busiest in the city), where Dalchand was present with the KBS+ Advertising creative team. At the station, the team shot a video while he used the Bissell Symphony All-in-One Vacuum and Steam Mop to scrub a single spot on the floor. After just a couple of minutes, the floor appeared nice and gleam.

Next, Dalchand took out some pasta and dumped it all over the spot of floor he’d just cleaned. He proceeded to eat it all up, much to the shock of the subway-goers around him. The video shows people watching him incredulously, horrified at what he was doing. But Dalchand wasn’t finished – he took out a bread roll to mop up the extra sauce and ate that as well. He then spoke directly into the camera, introducing himself and the product.

It turns out that Dalchand didn’t even need a lot of convincing to do what he did. “They told me it would help in my dating life,” he joked. “Typically, we’re a little conservative. But because this product was so innovative, we felt we needed to shock people and tell a story a bit differently than we would otherwise. When they came up with the concept, it didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting. It’s a product I use myself and can get behind.”

“We decided to do something so simple, we’re surprised it hasn’t been done yet,” said Raul Garcia, CD at KBS+. “This was a product statement. As soon as we heard it, everything else paled in comparison.”

“Sometimes, just a torture test and a real truth amplifies the message,” added CCO Matt Hassell. “We’re in an age where there’s a lot of tools at our disposal – we could have shot this with drones – but sometimes when it’s that true and simple, all you need to do is show it.”