I just want to know how 37ish people approved this ad...
And at the end there's a very weird flex
Hello Gobbledeers,
How’s it going?
Can I start off with the absolutely pettiest thing?
I’m a little embarrassed I’m even bringing this up.
But not so embarrassed that I’m not going to bring it up.
You ever see a post on LinkedIn where someone is talking about some meeting they attended, and they say something like, “Another quarterly sales kickoff is in the books!”
Like there are books out there that are filled with transcripts of QBRs, executive offsites, regional breakfasts, and vendor user conferences.
I always think to myself, “that book would suck so much.”
(That feels so good to get off my chest.)
Moving on…
But It’s NOT for Everyone…
I’ve spoken here a few times about the marketing strategy of creating a tribe - of separating the world into people who get your product and those who don’t. It’s a favorite strategy of mine, because people like to belong to something (and also like to hate other things), and this strategy does both.
Longtime readers may remember this ad for colorful skis that used that strategy brilliantly:
The challenge with this strategy is that it really only works in organizations that are comfortable having a product and telling some people that it’s not for them. If you’re a marketer who has ever tried to present this strategy internally, someone may have said to you something like, “But we DO sell skis with normal graphics, and we don’t want to upset anyone” (kumbaya, etc).
And maybe you respond, “Of course, but we have to segment the market so we can target it and the more we resonate with one group, the more we’ll sell.”
And maybe they respond, “But we DO sell skis with normal graphics, and we don’t want to upset anyone” (kumbaya, etc).
Which is why I have to give credit to the Nebraska Tourism Commission , which (apparently?) until recently has used a “Tribe” strategy for their tourism slogan:
(From The Morning Brew):
That’s a good tagline! It’s too good for Nebraska! They don’t deserve it! That tagline isn’t for everyone!
Also, I think they stole it from Alabama, who used it in the 1950s. Also Mississippi.
(Thanks to longtime reader Susan B. for that one. OK, Susan B. is my wife.)
THAT Is How You Use Humor in an Ad
I had a point I wanted to make about a commercial, which I will make shortly, but while looking for a clip of that ad, I found what has to be the most disturbing commercial ever made.
Now, if you’re a human of more recent vintage, you may be thinking, “Obviously, Jared, it’s that Nationwide Insurance ad they ran during the Super Bowl in 2015 where there’s a little boy who’s telling you all the things he can’t do and the wacky twist at the end is that the kid is dead.”
Well, yes, that is the second most disturbing ad ever and they ran it in front of 100 million people. Here you go:
And remember, it was during the Super Bowl, so that was probably right after an ad where a guy shits himself so he doesn’t have to give up his Doritos (or whatever…but also, that’s definitely the premise of a Doritos Super Bowl ad.)
Even if you crossed the formerly-living-child-shilling-insurance with guy-shitting-himself-to-prevent-having-to-give-his-Doritos-to-his-grandmother (can we get Shaq in a wig?), and turned that into one ad for Doritos Insurance, it wouldn’t even come close to being the most disturbing ad.
Because that honor lies with the marketing team that was working on the Love’s Baby Soft line of fragrances and body lotion nearly 50 years ago.
Imagine it’s 1975, and you’re tasked with figuring out how to take this line of beauty products that are positioned as having some of the features associated with baby’s skin (softness, for example) and babies in general (innocence), and use that to sell these products, not to babies - as they don’t buy perfume - but to actual adult women.
Would you:
A) Talk about how soft and smooth your skin will be - just like a baby’s skin! - and how that will just make you feel great about yourself and also you’ll be able to go out and do The Hustle at the local discotheque*.
(*holy crap, I spelled that correctly the first time)
or
B) Shoot a commercial where a woman - an adult woman - is suggestively licking a lollypop (?) while the voiceover says Baby Soft has, “the innocent scent of a cuddly, clean baby…that grew up to be verrrrry sexy.”
Somehow, some ad agency put forth Option B.
Consider yourself warned, but here’s the ad:
They pitched Option B to the Love’s company, and the executives at Love’s probably said something like, “We like the direction you’re going in with the pedophilia, but let’s get back together in a week and you can show us a storyboard…now let’s order another round of martinis.”
Then they got back together a week later, and they’ve drawn a sketch of the ad, and there’s a woman in a dress licking a lollypop and everyone says, “that’s exactly what we had in mind!”
And the ad agency guy says, “we’re thrilled to hear that…now we need to discuss the voiceover.”
And the client says, “Of course! What were you thinking?”
And the ad agency guy says, “I was thinking it would be a smarmy old man who says something about how this baby is going to be verrrrrrrry sexy one day.” And the client says, “Everyone loves when a man talks about sexy babies…that makes them want to buy perfume! Go shoot it, and we can’t wait to see the finished product! Until then, I’m going back to the office to smoke.”
So they wrote the copy and hired an actress, and bought a lollypop, and hired a director, and a camera guy, and a lighting guy, and a bunch of other people and they shot the commercial and - maybe this is just a testament to how much cocaine everyone was doing in 1975 - not a single person said, “Rather than making me want to buy Love’s Baby Soft lotion, watching this ad is making me want to vomit everything I’ve eaten for the past 2 days.”
Isn’t that the weirdest part? Either nobody voiced an objection, or somebody overruled those objections, saying “Nah - whenever I see a baby, I think ‘some day that will be a verrrrrrrry sexy woman.’”
Anyway, I almost forgot - the sexy baby lollypop perfume wasn’t even what I wanted to talk about.
What I wanted to talk about was a marketing stunt that ABC and the fine folks at Lay’s potato chips pulled on Groundhog Day, where they ran the same set of commercials for Lay’s chips 75 times over the course of the day.
Lay’s created 8 ads featuring the actor who played Ned in the movie Groundhog Day. (“‘Needlenose Ned’? ’Ned the Head’? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again. I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore?”).
He experiences a Groundhog Day-like scenario where each time he goes up to check out in a grocery store, he has exactly the same interaction with the clerk. Like in the movie (get it!)
Anyway, they made 8 versions of the ad, though in each one he’s holding a different variety of the chips.
You can see all of them here:
I wanted to talk about it because we often see stunt-type marketing during the Super Bowl, and one of my beefs with most (nearly all?) of those ads is that they’re frequently trying to be humorous (er… “humorous”) without actually tying in any way back to the product.
Like, say, this classic from Bud Light where a horse farts on a guy’s date:
(Though, was that the ad for new Bud Light Horse Fart Dry? It might’ve been. My bad).
The Lay’s ad was focused on the actual product point they’re trying to make - that Lay’s comes in a boatload of different flavors. And the ad makes it super clear that that’s the point they’re trying to hammer home - that even if you live the same day over and over and over again, there are enough flavors of Lay’s that you’ll have a different flavor each day.
(I’m not sure why I had to explain that. My apologies.)
When you watch the ads this weekend, notice how few of them use the humor (“humor”) in a way that actually says anything about the product.
And how many involve gassy animals.
This Is a Very Odd Flex
But I walk these streets, a loaded six-string on my back
I play for keeps 'cause I might not make it back
I've been everywhere, (Oh yeah) still I'm standin' tall
I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all
As always, thank you for being a part of the Gobbledy community. A couple of quick notes:
- It would mean a ton if you shared this with anyone who you think might enjoy whatever this newsletter is.
- I really, really enjoy chatting with readers, which is why I include a link to sign up for a 25 minute chat: Here’s my Calendly link. We can go over your website, or talk about super bowl ads. Whatever.
- And lastly, I’ve been doing a bunch of 1-day workshops around messaging, and the outcome is that your homepage will be SO much clearer. If you want your homepage to be clearer, we should chat. You can reply to this newsletter, use that Calendly link, or email me at jared@sagelett.com.
Bonus: The Only Nebraska Marketing Story I Know
This is already longer than it needs to be, but I know exactly one Nebraska marketing story, and I figured if I can’t use it here, I’ll never use it:
In 1976, NBC decided to redesign their peacock logo to align with the big red-white-and-blue Bicentennial theme of the year. They paid an agency (apparently) $1 million (that doesn’t sound right), to come up with something new and red-white-and-blue.
They roll out the new logo, and shortly thereafter the network receives a nastygram from the legal team at Nebraska’s PBS stations (then called Nebraska ETV), telling them to stop using the logo because it looks - I almost wrote “suspiciously like” but really it’s “exactly the same as” - the Nebraska ETV logo:
Oops!
Blah blah blah, NBC decides they love their new bicentennial logo and settle with the Nebraskans, giving them a fancy new mobile TV truck and paid to have them re-design their logo.
(Thanks to this story for all that info.)