scAD Wars: Starburst Berries and Cream
scAD Wars is brought to you by Advertising Design professor Sean Trapani’s Copywriting for Broadcast class.
ROBERT PIZZOLATO
Nowadays, advertising needs to stand out. It needs to be remembered. It needs to do something so odd and new that people ask “what the bleep was that?” Otherwise, it’s just going to get lost amongst the barrage of ads we see everyday.
This is especially difficult for candy. With a million products out there, how do you advertise? You don’t. You oddvertise.
Starburst seems to be jumping on the oddvertising band wagon. Skittles and Snickers are two other candy brands guilty of oddvertising. Why is this?
There are a few reasons. One, the target market responds to it. Two, due to the recent health craze, people aren’t buying candy as much. This ad doesn’t really even focus on the candy, its all about the weirdness of the dancing lad. And finally, oddvertising is what advertising would be like if a bunch of teenagers hopped up on sugar ran things.
The final and strongest argument I can make about this ad is its “viral” status. I know after I saw this ad, I kept asking people if they had seen it, and telling them about how oddly hilarious it is.
But I’m not the only one infected by this viral video. The video has almost 7 million hits, and 4.5 stars on YouTube. Whether this ad sold lots of Berries and Cream Starburst or not, it has definitely raised brand awareness and earned its viral stripes. What can I say? I’m a little lad who loves berries and cream!
JENN GLOVER
Starburst Berries and Cream: got it.
Starburst Berries and Cream with a tagline reading “Juicy Goodness”: got it.
Starburst Berries and Cream and a tagline reading “Juicy Goodness” and a grown man in an 18th century child’s outfit, dancing and singing an octave above his natural vocal range:I don’t get it.
There has been a trend in advertising, especially with candy, to try to be just plain weird in an effort to get attention. This “oddvertising” is fun, but viewers have gotten used to the concept and require oddvertising ads to have more thought behind them now, even if the thought is ludicrous.
For the sake of argument, I’ll use the nonsensical Skittles ads by way of comparison. In this particular Berries and Cream commercial, Starburst had the opportunity to pull it together with a clever tagline. However, they simply mimicked Skittles without the Skittles ingenuity and failed to make a strong tie to their product.
The result is a commercial where the man could be singing about any candy and it fails to generate the laughter it should. Even Skittles’ hysterical ads alter the tagline at the end to in some way coincide with the illogical ad that came beforehand. Starburst missed a major opportunity to make that dancing man work with their product.
If the spot in all its ridiculousness had maintained a sense of wit, the viewer would feel rewarded for watching and it would have been more successful overall.
