While it would be so much fun to jab McDonald's for its recently launched, duplicitous eat healthy ad campaign, we're going to restrain ourselves.
We're not going to call it a veiled effort at heading off lawsuits or a double-talk marketing strategy similar to tobacco company funded anti-smoking campaigns. We're not going to call attention to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the millions spent on this campaign are simply being spent to further increase McDonald's market share. We're not going to point out the ludicrous analogy of showing animated fast food paraphernalia demonstrate proper exercise in the ads. We're not going to suggest a great headline for this campaign would be, "Don't Eat At McDonald's." And, we're not going to point out that it's parents, not McDonald's, that need to be hit over the head with a nutritionally balanced 2 X 4. No, we're just going to sit back, smile, and enjoy one of the most expensive, grasp at survival, PR campaigns launched in recent history.
As we go through our day wondering aloud if we should lose some wait and exercise or whether or butt or boobs are too big, we often forget what sort of messages that sends to kids, or so goes the thinking behind a new ad campaign from Toronto Public Health. The currently running campaign, called "Your Kids Are Listening," shows pictures of kids beneath commonly utter adult phrases such as, I never seem to find time to exercise," Does my butt look too fat in these jeans," and I could stand to lose a few pounds."
While well intended, it's unlikely parents are going to start saying, "Damn, baby. I love your fat, floppy ass!" or "Honey, don't go workout today, I love that your beer gut crushes me when you're on top of me."
or "Babe, you don't need a reduction. I love that your boobs hang to your waist." The campaign includes brochures that explain how to live a healthy lifestyle by example so parents don't have to worry about comenting on their thunder thighs within earshot along with some beneficially squishy copy on self esteem.
In what could be a turning point for marketers yearning to re-connect with jaded consumers, Wrigley's has brought back the Doublemint Twins of yester-year when all that mattered was whether or not you went to the prom or if you had The Preppy Handbook. Rather than take the lowbrow Coor's hottie twins approach, Wringley's and its agency, BBDO Chicago, chose, smartly, to go with nostalgic kitsch factor. The television commercial shows two impossibly innocent looking - by today's standards - twins dressed in cutsey 60's dresses anachronistically riding their bicycle through vignettes of today singing, "You didn't double your pleasure, you just doubled your pain" and, in a nod to today's oddities, "Deodorant's extreme, water's got caffeine, even the news is mean."
As part of the campaign, Wrigley's is holding an online and physical casting call in search of other pairs of twins for future campaigns.
UPDATE: Footage from the old campaign.
In what could be a turning point for marketers yearning to re-connect with jaded consumers, Wrigley's has brought back the Doublemint Twins of yester-year when all that mattered was whether or not you went to the prom or if you had The Preppy Handbook. Rather than take the lowbrow Coor's hottie twins approach, Wringley's and its agency, BBDO Chicago, chose, smartly, to go with nostalgic kitsch factor. The television commercial shows two impossibly innocent looking - by today's standards - twins dressed in cutsey 60's dresses anachronistically riding their bicycle through vignettes of today singing, "You didn't double your pleasure, you just doubled your pain" and, in a nod to today's oddities, "Deodorant's extreme, water's got caffeine, even the news is mean."
As part of the campaign, Wrigley's is holding an online and physical casting call in search of other pairs of twins for future campaigns.
UPDATE: Footage from the old campaign.
