innovation + motivation + inspiration

I’ll preface this by saying I’m fascinated by advertising and I love to analyze the effectiveness of different campaigns. I imagine this will become a regular installment, so I’m optimistically numbering this post and creating a category…hehe.

Dove + Heroin

So I try not to watch too much television as a rule, but there are a few shows that I consider guilty pleasures. While I was watching something a week or two ago, a commercial caught my eye. The ad was for a new body wash that Dove has released, and it is startlingly similar to various sequences from the film Requiem for a Dream in which characters do anything from cocaine to weed to diet pills to heroin.

I’ve done a youTube mashup for your viewing pleasure after recording many nights worth of reality tv (cringe) and watching at 8x the speed…hehe.

I’m assuming that the intent here is to convey the enticing nature of the product in a fresh way, but I don’t imagine that Dove hopes to undermine their brand equity any further by intentionally evoking imagery that relates to addiction. For the record, I think Aronofsky is brilliant, but this was a depressing film to watch and it is anything but fresh and upbeat.

As is, I think the parallel will be drawn instantly in the mind of anyone who has seen the film, but with a few adjustments, Ogilvy & Mather could have easily pulled the final ad further from the film sequences by which it was inspired. Fast cuts alone don’t evoke the film, but the inclusion of the eye dilating is a bit much. It also doesn’t serve much of a purpose in the context of the product since the allure of the bodywash experience is hopefully its scent, how it feels going on, and how your skin feels after you’ve washed it off. It may be in there to signify intensity, but it still feels disconnected from what the ad hopes to communicate, and it is, by far, the most evocative element from the Requiem for a Dream Sequences.

The next couple changes are probably extraneous and/or playing it safe. I would probably also avoid some of the man-made audio like the metal shower curtain hooks clanking against each other and I might drop the volume on the organ music a bit. This doesn’t specifically relate, but the harsh contrast between the natural sounds and the aforementioned audio clips comes across as more startling and aggressive than invigorating and fresh.

Skittles + Candles

Okay, so I actually think the commercial for the new Chocolate Mix Skittles is hysterical, and strangely effective.

It draws attention to the brand and product by being funny and unconventional and I think this is enough to entice people to try a new product. That’s about the most a candy company can hope for when it doesn’t sell actual chocolate.

So here’s the thing about candy, though. If you get someone to actually try it….it better not taste disgusting. And let me tell you…Skittles Chocolate Mix is nasty. They basically taste like I imagine a Yankee Candle would if they added sugar and turned the overwhelmingly artificial aromas of baking into a bite-sized treat.

Gum + Lies

And that leads me to Stride Gum. I actually laughed out loud at their latest commercial.

Now…their entire campaign thus far has been about the gum’s flavor lasting eternally long. Obviously they’re over-promising slightly…but the gum is kinda gross and it really doesn’t last noticeably longer than anything else I’ve tried. <3

So it pretty much all comes down to the same thing…an ad agency can do a brilliant job getting people out to try something, but the product often doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. Lame.