scAD Wars is brought to you by Advertising Design professor Sean Trapani’s Copywriting for Broadcasting class.
Addicted to whacky
JAKE WRIGHT
Launching a new brand into a crowded category is a tricky proposition. The advertising must be unique and edgy to set the brand apart. At the same time, if it goes too far, it can alienate potential consumers. Ads should be original, but traditional; wild, yet restrained. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (Adweek’s agency of the year) accomplish this brilliantly for Emerald Nuts.
The success of this campaign is largely due to a novel Unique Selling Proposition, which presents Emerald Nuts as an “energy food.” In a market where competitors are positioned as salty snacks, this differentiates the brand for consumers and establishes a solid foundation for the campaign.
The first ad (aired during the 2007 Super Bowl) opens with an office full of sleeping workers. A voiceover states, “Around 3 p.m., when your blood sugar and energy are low, some say Robert Goulet appears and messes with your stuff.” Sure enough, the octogenarian crooner drops from an air vent and wreaks havoc.
Bizarre? Of course. Brilliant? No question.
The message is clear: Emerald Nuts will give you energy. Absurdist humor throughout the delivery generates interest in the brand and the campaign. The ad has been posted to YouTube by several users, and has been viewed a total of 189,368 times as of this writing. These views are entirely voluntary and offer perspective on the campaign’s success.
If your sales are up, your brand is healthy and people are watching your ads for fun, you’ve done a lot of things well.
Emerald is nuts
ELIZA SHKOLNIK
I don’t just watch TV for the shows, because, come on, nowadays when you turn on your television, you’re watching mostly commercials. I love some commercials, but what makes some commercials good, can make others — like the new Emerald Nuts campaign — go horribly wrong.
This is the spot with the “Addicted to Love” girls. I feel it was very poorly thought out and they tried too hard. There was too much going on, which made it hard to understand the point of the commercial — unless you watched it over and over.
It’s one thing to make the audience remember your commercial by getting a rise out of them, but the client doesn’t just want you to attract the audience; they want you to sell their product. The Emerald Nuts commercial loses the audience even before the commercial ends. Although they have the hot, seductive chicks and the idiotic men — which our society views as funny — the reason for buying the product makes no sense. Why do I need nuts to stay sharp? The last thing I’m going to do if I feel fatigued is pick up a can of nuts to make myself stay up.
The commercial is just too silly and irrational for the product. They leave you remembering this bizarre scene, but do you remember what they are selling and why you should actually go out and buy it?
Call me crazy. But I think they’re nuts.
