So, Super bowl is here. For us who live in Europe and frankly hate sports, this is not less big of a deal. This is the time of the year when all marketers gaze the screens carefully watching what the rich advertisers are preparing for this advertising feast.
Big brands are holding their safe side, keeping their communication carefully surrounded by their brands’ own values, stepping out in humor and comedy in very convenient and socially acceptable way. They won’t provoke, they won’t cross the line, they won’t be weird and edgy, they will be mild. Hyundai got good results with Ad Meter with their ad in which an overprotective father spies on his daughter on her first night out with a guy. It’s quite obvious whom they are targeting and what feeling they are trying to mirror with this too much loving dad. Funny, but-heh. It’s like polite jokes that you can tell after business meeting: there’s nothing real funny about them because they are polite. The varieties of “polite jokes” is quite interesting this year because polite humor was somehow the big theme of most of the ads this year. I won’t take your time with what does not really deserve it, but I will jump right to what requires your attention:
[Tweet “You might think you’ve seen it all, but hold your horses, people, because puppymonkeybaby is here!”]
This ad is awesome on so many levels. First of all, it grabs my attention. Well, marketers, that’s one big A from your AIDA! Really, not many things lately got my attention and being so pissed off after boring content widely shared by people on Facebook, I posted my status few months ago “I don’t care about anything else but cute puppies and babies”. And it’s like someone heard my prayers! They shot a TV ad about it! Wow!
So, puppymonkeybaby is a hybrid monster of 3 awesome things combined! It’s actually a monkey with a puppy face that can lick you up and baby legs so he can dance in a funny way so you can laugh. And why is it a monkey, I don’t know and I don’t care, but it’s still great.
So, why is this thing so great apart from being really weird and therefore funny? It actually manages to do one very difficult thing. It presents completely new product which is a mixture of Dew, Juice and Caffeine. Mtn Dew is a hybrid product of juice, dew and energy drink and this ad communicates it so easily. It grabs your attention because you see some weird creature that disturbs you and it repeats it name while dancing puppymonkeybaby, puppymonkeybaby, puppymonkeybaby. Somehow, your brain catches it even though it’s completely irrational, but singing it repeatedly it becomes familiar. Now, think of a group they are targeting: youngsters whose attention is hard to get and even harder to keep. This generation browses through Instagram whole day and it gives their milliseconds of attention only to something extraordinary. Their brains are full of content and their attention is precious because it’s spent during the day on huge amount of content. In this information overload it’s very hard to come up with something that will stick up to their brains, so it needs to be short and sticky.
Frankly, new FMCG brands that are unfamiliar to youngsters are in a tough position. They need to push through Coca Cola, Apple, Pepsi and other familiar giants who are in position to sell their brands through mild campaigns. [Tweet “Newbie brands simply can’t do that because there is no time in youngsters’ minds for mild happiness campaigns.”] So, thumbs up for puppymonkeybaby brave move, which is much smarter than it actually seems.