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Enough Already with the White guys rapping

by Kaza Razat
Monday, August 21, 2006. 06:04PM
663 Views 8 Comments

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Someone else may blog about Smirnoff's teaparty brand video where corny ass country club, WASPs rhyme about junk but I have to have my say. This has been old since the onslaught of Lazy Sunday copycats hit Youtube. People are buzzing about this but I really think there are other pop culture phenomena for Ad creatives to exploit. While I commend the brand for embracing digitally distributed content I must again speak out about the herd mentality in advertising.

Other recent brands pissing me off with their "biting"

Burger King does guys in chicken suits then all of a sudden McDonalds has an ad with a guy with chicken feet.

VW shows car crashes and has funny German engineers then Dodge pops up with Dr Z, German pres. of the company and he crashes a car.

Skittles does wacky, look at me spots and everybody from Snickers to Starburst, to crummy gum brands now want to own wacky as if that's going to make somebody run and buy their teeth rotting candy.

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Comments

 8 shown
Sunday, September 3, 2006. 08:11PM by EXIT3A .com
Enough already with rapping.
Saturday, August 26, 2006. 09:03AM by Bruce DeBoer
BTW - I've never seen it.
Saturday, August 26, 2006. 09:02AM by Bruce DeBoer
Original AND good is the tough one. Even SNL struggles with the good part. They've always - since day one - had the reputation of 20% brilliance and 80% suck. That said however, I'd add that the chasm is more like 25 - 30 miles since advertising is paid to get measurable ROI in a specific demographic in 30 seconds. It's a totally different animal. Even Tina Faye may follow the herd of buz and trend given typical agency creative cultures.
Saturday, August 26, 2006. 08:56AM by Sunil Shibad
I like it.
Friday, August 25, 2006. 09:54AM by Kaza Razat
Kevin I think there might be a 20 mile chasm between the comedic talent on SNL and the talent at most ad agencies. Then there's also that obstacle called the client. I think people just need to open their eyes. I've been to places where creatives aren't looking at other work happening in the industry.
Friday, August 25, 2006. 12:31AM by Kevin Glennon
Coming up with something new and original isn't hard. Saturday Night Live has to do it every week (well, 26 weeks a year, or whatever their schedule is). Most commercials and commercial advertising efforts SUCK because even the original ones are pursuing a concept that's humorous to them.
The real deal in making something huge is making is awesome both for your brand AND for the consumer. For example, think Aflac. Who else is out there selling short term disability using noisy animals? Now let's talk Ford... CAN you talk Ford?!?
Wednesday, August 23, 2006. 10:29AM by Bruce DeBoer
I think there is some of what Kim mentioned but I also think she's giving them too much credit - mostly it's uninspired creative copycats. Check out the July issue (I think) of PDN (photo district news) for their article on copycat creative. There is plenty of blame to go around - but regardless - it is better to be a leader than a follower. Keep them reactive, they'll always play catch-up especially if your product is better than theirs.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006. 08:34AM by Kim S
Actually - from where I sat as a promo producer, the "other guys" used to copy our work all the time, they'd change it to suit them of course, but copied the idea none-the-less. Then we came to realize something: they copied us to take the thunder out of our creative. They were purposely trying to homogenize the market and confuse viewers, at least that's we believed (guess we gave them a lot of credit). In any event, it was our challenge to come up with spots they could not copy, do things that were true to our BRAND and therefore were off limits for them. THAT is working, and that is what gets lost today, advertisers who are not incorporating the clients BRAND in a way that furthers the brand and it's image. An apple ain't an apple if you paint it orange. It still is on the inside but the apple as a brand or "image" is lost or becomes confusing to consumers - at best.

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