Gawker
Sure, the current dicey economic climate has reduced America to nation of terrified food hoarders. But more importantly, it has cost us some of our annoying and unnecessarily strange advertising icons: Applebee's Wanda Sykes-voiced talking apple, and a bunch of guys running around in bizarre red pigtail wigs on behalf of Wendy's. Take a moment to mourn them. "Both campaigns were meant to attract younger diners," the Times reports. But they failed, because kids aren't doing as many drugs these days, I guess. The companies' new advertising strategy? "Hey, look at our food."
Advertising and restaurant executives point to several reasons that neither campaign was a hit. The bizarre red wig commercials were too much of a departure from Wendy's folksy brand; the apple was not a strong enough image to represent Applebee's. It is unlikely, though, that either one would have been ended so quickly in better economic times.Instead, both marketers have opted for a more recession-proof approach: glamour shots of food that are intended to make mouths water and prompt consumers to reach for their wallets.
THEY WILL BE MISSED. Wait; no.
[NYT; disclosure: I once worked with Doug Quenqua, author of this article.]
Comments
I'm not sure I understand. If traditional ads work better than weird ads, why the hell would you ever use anything else?
Oh come on. Those were really funny. But they didn't, it's true, make me want to eat at Wendy's.
They made me want to be a Wendy.
I always wonder whether campaigns this godawful could have possibly started as an idea that made some semblance of sense, and then were focused-grouped and committee'd into absurd nonsense that's of use to nobody; or whether there are simply a good many people in the ad business that are massively out of touch and should genuinely not be collecting a check for their "work".
@TheHonJudgeSmails: Because ad agency creatives are creative and they must show their creativity at all costs even if it's well proven that showing glamour shots of food makes people hungry (and I believe it is a fact). My personal experience with agency creatives is that they don't care much about research and demographics and that they are incredibly thin-skinned in general.
I believe that wig was stolen from Pippi Longstocking
@I Don't Get It: Wow. I'm cranky today.
@famousauthor: How I love her funny naaaaaaame.
@I Don't Get It:
No, that was totally spot on.
Also, I would add that there's a prevalent culture of creatives trying to 'out-weird' one another.
@Gayyker:
I don't think so. I think the weirdness is a result creatives that are fundamentally conservative in humor and taste trying to grapple with such newfangled concepts as ironic or irreverent humor and viral marketing. They think that creating utter nonsense is a better strategy for tapping the contemporary hip, youthful sensibility than creating, say, a gag that works, but might be perceived as corny...as if there's some sort of merit in pumping the same millions of dollars into R&D just to come out the other end with something that makes no fucking sense.
I'd rather watch commercials with dudes in crazy wigs, and other semi-funny shit, just because I'd rather be entertained during the commercial break, instead of being manipulated into eating the 17,000 calorie ventricle-buster from Applebees.
@I Don't Get It: Seems fair; but why are the people holding marketing pursestrings willing to finance it?
@TheHonJudgeSmails:
Because brands can't survive on product shots alone - new brands can't create a distinct identity within the market with simple product shots (unless the product itself is extremely sexy and revolutionary), and old brands...well, get old.
A good creative campaign can be extremely lucrative and glamorous, and the people holding the purse strings often don't understand creative, and aren't necessarily interested in grappling with the intangibles of what will connect with an audience. So they make an informed crap-shoot based on market research. Sometimes it translates and more often it doesn't.
@TheHonJudgeSmails: @Chaim Gnadelstein: <--- What he said.
+ Watch video
@Adminitraitor: I believe it's called a "diabetes explosion"...
But will Burger King still have their weird ads?
I think a perfect example of funny commercials that work are the "Real Men of Genius" commercials from Bud Light. Even after all these years, I haven't gotten completely sick of hearing them. True, it's the same formula in every commercial, but at least the lyrics are clever.
@Duffin: I agree, but they were cancelled because there seemed to be no correlation to increased sales.
@Priam: a Dalek with an american accent is just wrong wrong wrong.
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