If there’s one thing I can tell you about advertising, it’s that commercials would consistently be awesome if there weren’t any pesky clients around to rewrite it and tell you the word “not” is a negative so you can’t use it, and that they’d like to put the head of HR’s kids in the ad, and that their CEO would be upset if you presented something with the word fuck in it.
Such whiners.
Nate used to tell me he hated copywriters. Haaaated them. Just thought they were the biggest hack writers of the universe, all failed comics and failed novelists, devoting all their time to figuring out something that rhymes with “Zestfully clean.” (And that would have been me, circa 1992. Forgive me.)
Then, after a few months of seeing me come home depressed from meetings where The Single Greatest Idea In the History of Advertising Ever was reduced to hey, can you do something with a monkey in it? he realized realized he was mistaken. There are a few hacks in the bunch, but there are also a whole lot of smart, creative people trying to make something entertaining and artful. Sort of like bloggers?
That’s why I always give credit to great ads, in part because there was a smart marketer somewhere in there willing to go, “Sure, let’s give it a shot.”
This week a reader sent me a link to this NPR story about the new Fling chocolate for women, and their test campaign in California and I have to admit it cracked me up. Also because I am predisposed to like ads that I think I’m supposed to be outraged about.
Now let’s overlook the fact that the woman is skinny and gorgeous and does not look for one second like those of us who might have the kinds of issues that would force us to sneak a chocolate bar in the dressing room. I am dying to try it, and I love the tagline Naughty, but not that naughty.
And kudos to the agency for the restraint. Because if Mars had put, say, the Mominatrix and me on the case, they might have ended up with something like
Fling. You know you want it.
Fling. Oh yeah, just like that baby. Right there.
Fling. What, you can’t handle a Snickers?
Got any others?
18 shards of brilliance… read them below or add one
Mmmmm. Sex.
I mean chocolate.
RIGHT. CHOCOLATE.
I liked the ad… and now I want chocolate. Or maybe the other…
As another mom and ad exec (on the Account side), I could not agree with you more that we need more clients, uh I mean marketers willing to do something that has punch and yells above all the other clutter. Whenever, I see a really horrible campaign you can always image the room of people around a table nodding like a herd saying, yeah it’s great…approved.
Great find and great perspective on every day life in EVERY agency on the planet.
My problem with advertising is that I think too much. I thought that ad was funny – but why did she take off her dress to eat a chocolate bar? And why didn’t she kick the stall wall and tell that guy to keep it down in there? Plus, she is way too skinny to be sneaking a chocolate bar in a dressing room.
I’m thinking…
Eat me
About says it all dont you think?
I think it hits the right note. Except for that being too skinny to be sneaking chocolate. Unless she is a model – then it would make sense. All I know is, I really want her shoes.
Fling. The second best thing you can eat in a dressing room.
BCAA runs a whole series of commercials up here that are seriously brilliant. < HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CppxfF-pliM" REL="nofollow">This <>is the only one I could find on Youtube so far.
Fling: It will f*ck you just right. But not literally. Figuratively. It will figure f*ck you just right.
That’s both an inuendo <>and<> a double entendre. Because, you know, if you eat a lot of chocolate your figure will be f*cked.
I’m so good at this.
I had a suggestion, honest, but Tracy’s comment made me LAUGH and now I’ve forgotten what I had meant to say.
So I second hers: Eat me.
Have you seen the new Quiznos commercials where the oven and the counter boy have a weird gay sex thing going on? I crack up every time the oven says ‘Put it in me’ and ‘We both enjoyed that!’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LQpRQh2KSQ
I’ll totally try that chocolate!
Spent seven years agencyside as an art director and am 2-1/2 years into a clientside gig as an inhouse designer. Everyday I ask myself, “What they hell happened to my account person? You mean I have to deal with these idiots directly, now?” And at the end of this clientside gig, I’m pretty sure I’ll have nothing to show for it in my portfolio because all original, clever ideas have been reduced to a piece entirely directed by a “client” who only needed me because they couldn’t pull off their layout in Word. Ugh.
Well, to incorporate both of the “taboo” words you mentioned, how about:
Fling. Not your average fucking chocolate.
I love the ad!
I just like the title of the post!
I laughed at “85 calories per finger.” heh heh.
Fling, it’s like sex but more satisfying. And without the need for that awkward pillow talk.
I need to have a shower now and some chocolate. STAT.
What an enjoyable post. As a copywriter myself, sometimes I’m more than willing to forego artful and funny for accurate and interesting. I remember when one of my financial services client asked me to remove the term “market fluctuations” from a Web site because it reminded him of flatulence. Ahhh, advertising.
As for Fling, how about THIS for a lack of restraint:
Fling. Get some. Move on.
Fling. Immediate pleasure. No guilt about not calling.
Fling. Two fingers never felt so good.
OK, now I’ve managed to gross myself out.
MK:)
procreation-station.blogspot.com