Like a fart joke told at a church dinner, ConocoPhillips 66’s decision to go with the new tagline, “Experts in gas since 1927,” is questionable at best. It’s like a fifth grade boy asking a classmate to pull his finger. Which is probably why the brand’s agency, Venables Bell & Partners, decided to cast Pee Wee football players in one of the campaign’s ads.
Awkward connotations aside, the brand would like us to understand the new approach is supposed to celebrate the company’s “unique heritage and long standing history of striving to bring consumers the best in performance gasoline.” Way to bring eloquence to gas.
The central part of the campaign is the “Local Legends” contest and it hypes and rewards the abilities of local customers in an online talent search and show. The program encourages people to find out if they are the “Phillips 66” of whatever it is they might do whether it be bird calling, whittling, doing pushups, or just plain old staring. But how about farting?
The contest, which runs May 16 – November 27, invites consumers to submit a video of anything they think they are good at to Phillips66.com and vote on other people’s submissions. Phillips 66 will recognize and reward these “Local Legends” by giving away prizes – from the three grand prizes of Gas for a Year to random weekly gas card drawings. The grand prize winners could win the chance to be featured in commercials next year.
Now that’s worth a good fart, isn’t it?
