Posts
I know. I know.
I’m so long overdue for a blog that I should be ashamed of myself.
And I am.
But it’s tough these days to find the time to sit down and hammer out a list of marketing “how tos” when things are so nutty. And I have actually written a few, but I’ve been so pumped full of pregnancy hormones that the boss has killed all my potential entries for the content being overly emotional.
Fortunately, a weight was lifted off the e-team when our newest designer, Wes Johnson, started Monday!
Another weight was lifted last night when Brian and our videographer-of-choice, Ben Boutwell, finalized and uploaded our entry for PepsiCo’s Doritos/Pepsi Max Crash the Super Bowl contest, which in short is a competition to have your commercial played during the Super Bowl.
The likelihood of our winning is a long shot; but don’t get me wrong, we are definitely contenders. Still, being one of the 10 best (actually, make that 5 best) submissions out of maybe 4-to-5,000 is going to be pretty tough.
Regardless of if we win or not, the experience was awesome. We rarely have the opportunity with our clients to go “all in” on a project, and we held nothing back on this one. In fact, in attempting to toe the line of “potty humor,” we may have actually crossed it. (An opinion held basically only by me, the only girl on the team.) But we think that our spot really talks to the right target and is capable of being a big viral hit… and hopefully the Doritos folks will look at it the same way!
What’s been most interesting is seeing how well we’ve built our spot around the presumed target… the Super-Bowl-watching, snack-product-buying audience (i.e. young to mid-30s males).
We started with the well-known fable, “The Midas Touch,” and wanted to show that in the case of Doritos that kind of power could never be a bad thing.
Our spot opens on a guy (the awesome Caleb Seney!) eating his last Doritos, only to discover a Doritos fairy (the lovely Leah Gordon!) inside his now empty bag. After a rough trip on screen, the fairy delicately transfers “The Doritos Touch” to the guy. He tests the Touch out on a sandwich, but then gets over-zealous and also changes the fairy.
But suddenly the guy wakes, and, checking out his now “normal” hands, realizes it was only a dream.
Or was it?
As the guy progresses down the hall to take care of a little morning business, we see the Touch begin to re-charge. Only our guy doesn’t notice the return until too late and… well, insert potty humor (literally). In the end, the guy shows us that, regardless of how Doritos are obtained, they are always, always tasty.
Again, the target audience is totally on board with the concept. They get it and, more importantly, they think it’s hilarious and shocking and they want to talk about it and share it with others… BINGO! Jackpot!
But people outside the target—women, older men, non-jock-types—aren’t getting it. Like, at all. They chuckle at the right time, but then ask what happened. We’ve been astounded at some of the things they’ve come up with when they’re trying to wrap their minds around what they’ve seen… especially when we think it’s fairly obvious what’s happening.
The resulting talk around the office is obviously what’s so different about these groups to cause them to “get it” or “not get it.”
My theory is that (A) guys are more comfortable with the visual being presented and (B) younger people, say 40 or 35 and younger, are more conditioned to fictional, fanciful storylines and don’t require things to “make sense.”
Brian’s opinion is that we have more of a technical problem. It’s a fairly fast paced 0:30 spot and so maybe we’re losing people who, er, need more time to think. Also, in the pre-final cut that we shared with a few people, the sound was a little janky causing one to possibly not fully understand the fairy’s line… still, the younger folks are getting the concept with or without understanding her.
I guess the cause of the discrepancy is ultimately anyone’s guess. At the very least, the target is totally on board and loves it.
So, how do you make a Super Bowl commercial? Well, I’m probably not the person to ask. Either we totally nailed it, or we didn’t.
Guess we’ll just have to find that out on January 3rd.*
Cross your fingers for us!
~Sarah, Emogen marketer
*January 3rd is the date that PepsiCo will announce contest Finalists. It’s not technically the end of the contest, but it’s a huge milestone!
