Ordinary Advertising

Maybe I should work from home more often or stop watching sports and The History Channel so much. This morning I had “The Today Show” on in the background as I was getting ready and mirabile dictu, I caught two cute TV spots (remember “cute” is good) back to back.

One was for a brand of snack goodies called Little Debbie that I’ve never heard of although my wife tells me it’s been around Chicago forever. All the spot amounted to was a series of different people singing the soul tune “My Girl” with varying degrees of tonal fidelity while each of them perused the Little Debbie display at a C-store. And all of this is being watched by the cashier and his buddies via the store’s surveillance cameras.

Now we’re probably not talking about a Cannes gold lion here, but the spot did do two things extraordinary advertising always does: It caught my attention and it made me aware in a likeable way of a brand I had no previous acquaintance with.

The other spot I have to describe before I remark on it.

The spot opens on the face of a very attractive, but clearly well into her 40s woman with her head on a pillow. She is looking to the side and the spot cuts to reveal an Adonis-like, 25-year old guy with his head on the pillow next to her. She gets out of bed and in a series of shots we see that her bedroom is palatial in size, she has a bureau drawer full of more diamond jewelry than you’d see at Harry Winston and there’s a unicorn in the backyard.

Okay already, we get it: she’s dreaming. And just in case we don’t get it, she starts saying to herself: “Don’t wake up, don’t wake up…” Then in fairly short order we see some fabulous looking bathroom sinks, learn that the sponsor of this fantasy is Kohler and realize the woman has woken up in bed beside a pleasant enough looking fellow who is rather plump, has a very furry chest and is much closer to her in age.

Once again, this is not a dream sequence on the level of Ridley Scott’s Chanel No. 5 spot of many years ago, but it did the job (on me at any rate). It caught my eye and charmingly engaged my attention. It also illustrates another important point.

Anyone watching this spot could see what was coming from a million miles away. You knew and I knew she was having a dream and at some point a product reveal was coming. But I don’t think that matters in this case. We all know what’s coming in a lot of comic strips, too. Same with popular TV shows, movies, James Patterson novels and many other things that attract our interest. As long as there’s a connection, in this case high-end bathroom fixtures and what women dream about, and it’s faithfully and honestly played out, it works.