Ridiculously silly concept.

Can anyone decipher the following ad for me?



This full page execution for FAGE yogurt appeared on the inside back cover of February's Bon Appétit.

My only question: what on earth does it mean?

You'll have to excuse my dairy product naivete here, but is ridiculous thickness an ideal quality in yogurt? I have to assume so, if that's the USP they're going with. I assume readers of food publications like Bon Appétit would understand better than I do, but the ad makes zero sense to me at all.

What does the thickness have to do with bees? Are you saying bees could use it to make honeycombs? I really think I'm missing something here, so I set out to investigate.

The website all follows the same motif, and quite frankly is really well done as far as intertwining graphics and web design while still having a navigable site.

The navigation bar sinks into the ridiculous thickness depending on which side you clock on. Props for that.

Things I learned from the website:

• FAGE is a Greek company founded in 1926
  
• FAGE is pronounced Fa-yeh (but it's all Greek to me...rimshot)
  
• They "never make a product that we would not give to our children"
  
• The thickness comes from the use of 4 pounds of whole milk in every 1 pound of yogurt
  
• The containers it comes in are called "pots," which kind of gives off that homey feel that grandma is churning this stuff out in her kitchen. That may or may not be a good thing.
  

Things I did not learn from the website:

• If beekeepers are beginning to use the yogurt to build artificial hives for their bees.
  
• Why FAGE is still paying their ad agency to come up with honeycombs pressed into really thick yogurt.
  

The lesson here, kids, is that although we can do some cool things with graphics, it doesn't mean we should. While yogurt is about as boring a category as you can get (wait, what am I saying? What about GOGURT!?), you don't have to throw all logical strategy out the window in order for people to look at your ad. In fact, I'm not sure I would have noticed this if a friend wouldn't have asked me, "do you understand what this means at all?"

If it doesn't stand out, it doesn't make sense and it quacks like a duck, chances are it's not a good ad. Unless it's selling yogurt pots by the busload, in which case, go nuts Fa-yeh.

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