Best ad on TV 5/10: Weber Grills

Saw this spot, "Have Fun With It," a handful of times watching the History channel tonight.



I really think they captured the core fascination with grilling. It actually has very little to do with the quality of the meat, provided no one gets salmonella or mad cow. It's about the grilling culture.

It's relatively easy to grill food, and it's also a social activity. No longer restricted to tailgaters and to dads on Memorial day; this ad seems to remind us that grilling is for everyone to have fun with.

I wish they would have included a little more grill-related activity. Maybe throw in a burger flip or two, or perhaps the artful squirting/spraying/dowsing of BBQ sauce. Regardless of this little lack of content, the spot is still very well done.

From what I can find, the folks behind it are Denver, CO based rabble+rouser, and the song is actually an original song made for the spot, called You Light Me Up by Open Sky.

Using the man as the spokesman: CEOs in advertising

Hey folks, long time no blog.

I've been driven to write after seeing the following spot for GM several times in the last couple days:



In it Ed Whitacre, CEO of General Motors, assures us that GM is back on its' feet, having repaid the government its bailout loan money with interest well in advance. I have to think that it's a great idea to use a "don't worry" campaign, regardless of how fresh Whitacre's news actually is, because it's still prime time to pounce on Toyota and try to win one for the domestic automakers.

Ironically in what I assume is unrelated news, GM dropped Chevrolet's ad agency this week. It's significant because Campbell-Ewald is the premier agency in Detroit (or at least the only one I could name there based on my rudimentary knowledge with no further research). Literally every Chevy ad you've seen ("Like a Rock," "An American Revolution," et all) has been the work of C-E.

But all that is neither here nor there.

The Whitacre spot reminded me of another CEO speaking on behalf of his company in TV spots, and maybe it did for you too. Remember Sprint's Dan Hesse?



These ads, ranging back to 2008, never did it for me. For one, they're pretty awful. Advertisers use spokesmen because people pay attention to celebrities (or so research somewhere suggests). When your spokesman is your smug new CEO, people have no reason to put down the Cheetos and listen (or even keep it on the same channel).

Secondly, all I ever took away from these ads was who the CEO was. Maybe it's because the GM spot is still fresh, but it seems a lot more respectable because it seems like a special message. Hesse was barking at me about the wireless revolution for more than a year.

I decided to look into this, and see if there was any way GM could have been influenced by Sprint in tossing their Chief Executive into the advertising. I didn't have to look far.

Turns out, Hesse and Whitacre are both former CEOs of AT&T, Hesse from 1997-2000, and Whitacre from 2005-2007. They were contemporaries in the wireless business for 20 years.


The executive sphere has certainly always been viewed as an Old Boys' Club of sorts, guys bounce from corporation to corporation and bring each other along regardless of industry knowledge. The last thing GM should want to do is remind people of that: it doesn't make people want to buy your products when they consider that you're making $60 million a year in a job that your old connections got you.

So here's my advice for General Motors and Mr. Whitacre: quit while you're ahead. You have a good thing going, with the worst of the economic crisis behind you. This advertising message is cute and I believe justified, but you toe a fine line when you personify the company with the CEO. Don't let Ed follow in Dan's footsteps and become just another commercial talking head, or worse, just another reviled, smug chief executive.

Lindsay Lohan: Got Milk?

She's always been a milkaholic...

The New York Post is reporting that Lindsay Lohan, most famous of course for her role in the critically acclaimed Disney Channel original movie Life-Size, is suing financial trading company E-Trade over a recent spot that you may recognize from the Super Bowl and other placements:



Her gripe with the ad is the part where the protagonist baby's supposed mistress, Lindsay, is accused of being a "milkaholic." This little quip, which Lohan interprets as mocking her, apparently offends the Lohan camp enough for them to sue for $100 million dollars, that is:

The complaint, as so eloquently put by Lohan's lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia:

"Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit...They're using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn't they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody's talking about it and saying it's Lindsay Lohan."

In other words, because Grey Group chose the name "Lindsay," they should have to pay up, because apparently there are no other Lindsays on Earth, and a spot featuring infants talking about investing somehow offended the star of The Parent Trap?

If anything, Linds should be offended by the way it was portrayed that her "character" was dating a male baby! Not even she is sure of her sexuality, how dare E-Trade insinuate at it!

I could go on to discuss the enumerable ways that this is ludicrous, but instead I'll take the high road:

I hereby offer a reward of one million dollars to anyone that finds anyone or anything using the name "Adam" that leads to a successful lawsuit against the parent company for using my name and characterization for business without my approval. Possible targets include:

Blink-182, for writing "Adam's Song" without my permission.
Snickers and NFL kicker Adam Vinatieri, for the monnicker "Adam Nougatieri"
Charles Addams, for his morbid portrayal and mispelling of my family's name
and of course,
The Bible, for associating me with the first man and his ejection from the Garden of Eden.

Suggestions are welcome.

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Mashups and sports commercials: mash made in heaven

Another incidence of recent pop culture overflowing into the industry:



This Gatorade spot, which remixes Muhammad Ali's famous promise, reflects a new-ish music trend. Mash up artists, previously confined to mixtapes and YouTube, are carving out a niche in the mainstream. They range from Joe Somebodies who have the software to throw together some tunes (that may or may not be copyrighted) in their respective dorm rooms to famous acts like Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk.

Girl Talk live at Syracuse University's Juice Jam in Fall 2009

What prompted this post was the appearance of some new spots for the NBA which caught my eye (and more so my ear) last month.



I assume the spots come from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners because they are the agency behind the whole "Where...Happens" campaign (which has been brilliant through and through). They remix quotes from the NBA's best players and coaches on various subjects and set them to a beat, with a bit of T-Pain-style autotune for good measure.

Is it an original idea? No. DJ Steve Porter's "Press Hop," which appeared on YouTube last summer, is a very well done and hilarious mash of famous press conferences given by various players and coaches, and is done in the exact same style. I wouldn't be surprised if Goodby had contact with DJ Porter in crafting the NBA spots, although I also don't imagine with today's media technology that it is even that difficult to do.

The best of the spots however (seen here) has to be the "Where Defense Happens" mash, because of:

1) The inclusion of aloof Magic coach (and Ron Jeremy body double) Stan Van Gundy (right)

and

2) The inclusion of the only highlights of defense being played in the NBA ever known to exist

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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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Why USA Today Ad Meter Sucks

The best commercials of the Super Bowl, according to respondents using USA Today's Ad Meter, were as follows:

1. Mars’ Snickers — Guy plays football like Betty White
2. Doritos — Dog puts shock collar on owner
3. Bud Light — Man builds house out of beer cans
4. Budweiser — Fences don’t come in between friends
5. Coca-Cola — African sleepwalker finally gets Coke

The problems with the system are several:

A) The winning commercials all ran during the first quarter, if not the first commercial break. People are expecting funny and will choke on their Doritos laughing at the first amusing thing that happens in a commercial because they are waiting with baited breath for Betty White to get trucked. By the time a lot of the best (in my opinion) commercials ran (like Google's, which many many people thought was the best), people were already bored and were just comparing every spot to the last silly Bud Light ad they saw.

B) The "best" ads reward humor in the opening of the spots, because they'll score highly at the beginning, whereas a good ad does not necessarily need to be funny in the first 5 seconds to be successful. Betty White getting tackled probably got the Snickers spot scoring 10s on the Ad Meter right away, whereas ads like Google's took some time to develop and only would have scored highly at the end (and by people who paid attention).

C) The ads deemed the "best" just means that a room of 250 people thought they were the most entertaining. Good ads aren't always the most entertaining - David Ogilvy started his agency around the idea that the primary purpose of ads was to sell products (or ideas). While branding and entertainment is great, it needs to work toward the purpose of generating sales, which is how the success of advertising is actually measured, whether USA Today likes it or not.

Quite frankly, while I did chuckle at the Bud Light house and I thought it was a decent piece of advertising, it doesn't compel me to buy Bud Light, and therefore I don't think it's among the best ads on the industry's biggest stage.

The Ten Commandments of Super Bowl Advertising (and 2010 violations)

So, here we lay in the wake of Super Bowl XLIV; New Orleans Saints fans are inevitably just waking up (around 6pm on the East Coast) in the gutters of Bourbon Street and my apartment now reeks of wounded chicken wings and skunked light beer:



I have to apologize for not previewing the Super Bowl ads this year, I haven’t been able to get around to writing anything worthwhile since going back to school, and maybe some of that has to do with having learned nothing about advertising this semester. It has more to do with the fact that I’m probably lazy (ergo the filthy apartment).

This entry will act as a guideline for judging this year’s ads, which on the whole I felt were very sub-par. Even as a lowly undergraduate studying advertising, I know there are several cardinal rules one shouldn’t violate when producing a TV spot, rules that should be held in especially high regard when the spots cost almost $100,000 per second.

I have taken this opportunity to put together what I believe should, from here on out, be the Ten Commandments of Super Bowl Advertising. I will list each of my Commandments, followed by the spot and advertiser that either heeded or violated it in 2010.

I. Thou shalt not save the big reveal for the end



Aside from reaching the “aw, that’s cute” segment of the population (which may be a lot, estimates say up to 60 million people who watch the Super Bowl don’t care about the football part), this spot was rather baffling. Almost 45 seconds of random toys prancing around, and the Kia Sorrento name is not used until the 54 second mark of the ad. By this time, Kia has wasted more than $5,000,000 with nonsense, only to have probably lost you by now. The “big reveal,” as a professor of mine calls it, needs to come early and often so that people know what they’re watching and why it’s important in context, otherwise you might show them an unrelated sponsored short film for a minute.

II. Thou shalt not pursue comedy at the expense of your commercial message



Brett Favre humor is great with NFL fans, you know, the other portion of people that watch the NFL’s championship game. Anyone that has watched SportsCenter (or FavreWatch, as I called it) each of the last two summers probably found this spot charming. The problem is that it probably created so much laughter and/or discussion after the first twenty seconds, that everyone missed the correlation with the 10-year warranty and the soothing Hyundai narrator voice. This also violates the 1st Commandment, albeit less severely because it may have actually amused people enough to have them watch it again later.

III. Thou shalt not rehash the same idea from Super Bowl ads of the past



Budweiser Clydesdales get a pass here because they have become a fixture of the Super Bowl, and without simple branding advertising this industry would suck. Teleflora used the exact same concept last year, but the flowers were noticeably less sassy this time around, so not only was the idea recycled, it was actually less funny:



Cars.com also used the same punchline, different story formula: boy-genius knows all and fears nothing, except buying cars. It was cute last year, it smelled stale this year (much like my kitchen, hardy har!).



Godaddy’s sleaze is getting really old, and it’s a shame that Danica Patrick still sinks to this level to endorse the web hosting/domain name giant year after year. They used to create buzz with their “banned” ads before the big game, but now everyone knows that it isn’t even worth it to log onto the site to see the “unrated” web content. Did you really think you’d see NASCAR’s next big thing nude? You have a better chance of seeing Dale Earnhardt pose for a centerfold…Too soon?

IV. Thou shalt not use a divisive figure for a divisive message



I’m going to set aside all of my disdain for Tim Tebow as an athlete and my distaste for pro-life messages when I say this: this ad was done as well and tastefully as possible. Yes, it did get booed at my Super Bowl party. But upon further review, this could have been way worse with all the hype it was getting as some extreme anti-abortion spot that would make liberals shut off their televisions in anger.

That all being said, it still was not a good idea for the NGO to run this during the Super Bowl, because you have the most general pool of an audience included in your 106 million impressions, and many of them will react as my friends did and end up missing your call to action, no matter how gently you put your message. This spot could open the floodgates for political or other particularly divisive advertising, which is typically much, much worse to look at.

V. Thou shalt not waste a celebrity endorsement/appearance



Production costs for Super Bowl ads are often overlooked when people talk about the price tag. It costs a lot of money to produce special effects and CGI and to pay celebrity endorsers to spread your message. I hope this spot is part of a larger campaign for Flo TV where they will feature will.i.am for more than 1 second, and also where they will use less of the Who. I’ve had my fill of My Generation and of Pete Townshend windmills for years to come.

VI. Thou shall use cute children with adult personalities





eTrade does not get in trouble for reusing the same idea because generally they are all still funny. They made the mistake, I thought, of saving the funniest for the post game show, but I assume most gluttonous Americans weren’t willing to rouse themselves and change the channel when the clock hit 0:00, so they probably got a good chunk of the full ratings points anyway. The kid in the Doritos spot was excellent, and this ad to me stood out amidst a sea of Doritos endorsement.

VII. Thou shalt not remind people how much money you spent on the Super Bowl



Stoners everywhere rejoiced at the success of their stereotypical favorite brand, or at least one must assume the Frito-Lay brand is doing well, given the fact that they probably spent close to $10,000,000 (yes, ten million dollars) on Super Bowl ads and sponsorship combined. They ran four 30-second spots and had their name elsewhere during the game. The casual buzz stopped being about how funny the ads were (mildly funny, in my opinion) to how much freakin’ money they spent on all the spots. Recession be damned!

VIII. Thou shalt not depict unattractive people in their underpants






This would not have made the list if not for multiple infractions this particular year. Since when did showing Joey and Janie Baggadonuts in their respective underpants become funny? Also, who still wears tighty-whiteys? The sumo diapers are not much better. At least the Dockers ad had a good jingle…

IX. Thou shalt not use a catchy jingle that doesn’t rhyme



There was a lot of buildup for this spot, in which Sir Charles Barkley channels his inner Shakespeare to explain the NBA $5 Box from Taco Bell in verse. The humorous value of the commercial lies in the awful poem, but it is clear that Chuck has fought to maintain his alias as “The Round Mound of Rebound,” and it hasn’t been by eating off the Fresco Menu.



X. By all means, thou shalt do something completely ridiculous



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