This week in Los Angeles, El Pollo Loco will deluge ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC with a fresh wave of ads -- toting its $0.69 Taco al Carbon, among other cheap fare -- right around primetime.
Don't wince: the campaign's being called Family Stimulus Deals, and El Pollo Loco CEO Steve Carley is front and center. Ads are expectedly political in nature, the kind of work you'd expect to see from a Senate member-to-be, except they shill chicken instead of community roadwork. Funny thing is, for a spread so riddled with shticks the whole thing falls flat.
Sometimes using your CEO just doesn't cut it. And it's a bit late to riff off the Stimulus Plans circulating the Gov like so many pigeons.
See "Gracias," a dubbed Spanish ad, by Ideas; others, including English-language ones, are on the Official El Pollo Loco YouTube site.
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A great article by Wharton School Professor of Operations Eric Clemsons entitled "Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet" takes a deep look at the current state (shambles) of advertising and what the future looks like after we all bid adieu to the industry's current lameness.
In a nutshell, and this is not a new line of thinking, it's all about people seeking information (because it's readily available) rather than having it shoved down their throats (as it has been since the dawn of advertising.)
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At a recent SXSWi panel conducted "core conversation-" style (in which a presumed thought leader guides a group discussion on the subject at hand), the hour spent sitting on the floor in a cramped meeting room proved one important fact about social media: Even the professed experts are doing it wrong.
A Dougie Howser-esque "social media specialist" at Razorfish and a group of others ranging in age from 17 to 32 years old sat cross-legged on the floor and cross-talked their way through a series of stereotypes, assumptions, and painfully incorrect conclusions.
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