As an immigrant, i am never fully at home in my adopted land. America never runs out of surprises. And being an outsider has been a decided advantage to me in my career. I can look at the American culture objectively in a way a native simply can’t. That’s a big leg up when you’re trying to affect a culture.
Consciously or not, at The Escape Pod we have quite a mix given our size. Irish, Polish, Welsh, Korean-American, Finnish-Italian-American, Jewish-American. Native-American-American. And of course, regular American. Got to have a few of those too!
Every culture has its unique set of foibles and ideas. This means you automatically have a different point of view. Without even trying. So if you mix them up, you automatically get something interesting! It’s a fun and lazy way of effortlessly being different. Try it!
last night we found out we won best of show in our local award show. We had a blast and are moving a bit slow today. we won for our penny pranks campaign for wonderful client OfficeMax. this is a big award. no seriously. it’s a monster. it’s the stanley cup of ad awards.
this is the third time this decade i have been lucky enough to win best of show in Chicago. my first win with The Escape Pod. It never gets old! congratulations to all at OfficeMax and everyone at The Escape Pod. and of course une grand merci! to director Henry Alex Rubin of Smuggler and thanks also to our flame-haired penny defender Matt McCarthy. It feels good to beat the big boys. Don’t mean that in a vindictive way, just in terms of the accomplishment.
And speaking of that, best of luck to my old comrades at DDB Chicago who are nominated (twice) for an Emmy for best ad this weekend. Both Budweiser and Bud Light got nods. If by horrid chance you don’t win guys, here’s my suggestion. Leave immediately. don’t waste your time fake congratulating the winner. Head to Chez Jays in Santa Monica and get royally plastered in the privacy of the back room. It did the trick for me.
Consequently will be blogging lightly for the next week or so. I know, a crushing blow. You’ll manage somehow. hard liquor will help.
we are about to shoot some more penny pranks. but this time we have upped the stakes considerably. It will be interesting, that’s for sure. wish us luck. hidden camera is hard on the nerves. maybe blogging will help soothe the nerves! if so, forget what i just said.
We just got our ad:tech gold award yesterday. it really fits right in here at The Escape Pod as you can see. i like this award because people like us care about this award. i look at who’s entering and i go “yeah, that’s who i want to compete with” in a way that i simply don’t with other awards shows. and i know it sounds like i would say that regardless, but i wouldn’t. i felt this was the show that would best understand what we’re trying to do here at The Escape Pod. and i was right. thank you ad:techers!
In a recent Ad Age article it is reported that Budweiser is considering a return to what is termed “emotional” advertising. Usually in the context of beer and esp. Budweiser, “emotional” means doing something reminiscent of the classic 1980s beer ads where beer was portrayed as a reward for a hard day’s work. Steel mill workers wiping their sweaty brows and having that first sip of beer. And that is completely valid. In our culture beer is the agreed upon means of letting off a little steam and relaxing.
But a lot has changed since the 1980s. Blue collar workers and blue collar jobs no longer dominate the culture. “After a hard day’s code-writin’, nothin’ beats a Bud” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. And “emotional” beer advertising is a lot harder to sell and execute do than comedic beer advertising. A belly laugh is a lot easier to gauge than a lump in the throat.
The problem with purely comedic beer ads is they can lack texture. You see them, you laugh, it’s over. Nothing sticks with you.The problem with purely emotional beer ads is that they can be too gooey for guys. “Come on dude, it’s only beer!”.
Part of the problem lies in the beer purchase decision process itself. It’s a lot more tricky than it might seem. The beer you drink says something about you. You drink Pabst Blue Ribbon? Then you live in Williamsburgh Brooklyn you’re 25 and wear Threadless t-shirts and ironically intended trucker hats. And it’s 2004…winking smiley face. You drink Budweiser? Then you…live in Ohio, you’re an average American. You probably like stuff…that’s cool. etc. I remember a great Bud print ad that read “What drinking one says about you is that you don’t care what drinking one says about you”. Which neatly sums up Bud’s place in the culture. It’s THE BEER in the USA. Like Guinness is in Ireland. It’s hard to both special and THE BEER in your culture. Budweiser is “special” in other countries where American beer is seen as exotic and cool much as Guinness is outside of Ireland.
One thing that I always found very telling and maddening about Budweiser in America was this. Young Bud drinkers would sometimes switch to Heineken when in a public social situation like a night club, ie when their image mattered. The glowing green bottle was considered smoover despite the fact that its contents had taken six months to get into your hand and so frankly couldn’t taste as good as Budweiser. But that just reinforces my point that with beer, it’s all in your head.
It’s easy to play laptop quarterback and tell Budweiser what they should and shouldn’t be doing. When I worked on the Budweiser business there was no shortage of people coming up to me and telling me what we should and shouldn’t do. Everyone is very familiar with both beer and tv commercials. But that doesn’t equate to experience of actually brewing and marketing beer in this country at this time. It’s a very big ship that moves very slowly.
Budweiser’s big problem hasn’t been brand image. Its problem is that for 25 years there has been a generational shift in taste preference away from light lager (Budweiser) to ever lighter and lighter lagers (Bud Light, Mich Ultra). So while on the one hand it (A-B) was losing share on Budweiser it was picking it up on Bud Light and Mich Ultra.
So will a more “emotional” approach work for Bud? Yeah, sure it could. At its core, a beer brand is your friend. Ideally your best friend. When you think about it, young beer drinkers ONLY associate their beer brand with fun and good times. Nobody ever cried tears of pain while drinking beer. That’s what whiskey is for!
So anything that works to “make friends” for the brand is a good thing. It’s all in the execution. And that’s why Budweiser, frankly, needs The Escape Pod. It’s not simply a matter of understanding the beer category or the Bud brand, it’s a matter of putting something on the TV that works like magic. And that’s the really tricky part.
Emotional beer advertising. Easy to parody, hard to create.
Just found out that our penny pranks campaign for OfficeMax has been named a finalist in the ad:tech awards. i like these awards because they don’t have the baggage of the old school ad awards. they’re not trying to be anything other than what they are: new and of the times we live in.
…and if that doesn’t sway the judges i don’t know what will
But the real reason i like them is the award itself. i just really want one of these babies:
At the Retail advertising awards the other night, The Escape Pod and client OfficeMax took home a gold and the best of show award for our penny pranks campaign.
Interestingly the awards were decided on the night by the audience at the show itself. Each of us was given a little electronic remote control device which we used to cast our vote. Which added a little more drama to the proceedings. The results were intstantly tabulated and displayed on screens for all to see.
Happily our penny pranks was the clear crowd favorite on the night, garnering 80% of the votes to take the best of show award.
Needless to say a punishing amount of refreshments were consumed immediately thereafter. A great night was had by all.
We are huge fans of the legendary UK adman Dave Trott here at The Escape Pod. We’ve blogged about his blog before. And now we’re blogging about a book of his blog posts: an unauthorized collection of his wisdom that Allan Stevenson, a Welsh Escape Podder, received as a gift from his Catalan girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. And they say romance is dead.
That’s a picture of it below. Lovingly hand-crafted by the incredible Maite Canto, it’s like the Book of Kells of ad blogs. Only one exists. And no, you can’t have it.
If Dave was looking for a sign that maybe there might be a market for a collection of his wisdom, surely this is it.
Great game. And some good ads. And one or two really good ads. It always pains me when people complain about the standard of the ads. yes, some years are better than others, but generally speaking there are only a few good ads per Super Bowl. it’s like SNL. mostly awful.
One thing I’ve noticed over my long-ish career is that the things that work best in advertising are frequently, upon analysis, what was staring us in the face in the first place. I’m going to mention Nike, so you can yawn now. YAAAAAWN!!! Anyhoo, Nike’s Just Do It idea is [...]
And please tell me that not a single dime was wasted “researching” this. And please tell me that no better ideas (such as NOT running this) were discarded in favor of telling me that it is now possible to purchase Miller Lite in a wide-mouth aluminum container (100% recyclable variety). This is the very opposite [...]
Legendary New York agency Cliff Freeman and partners just shuttered its doors. And anyone in creative advertising of a certain age shed a quiet tear. Cliff ruled American advertising like a giant in the 1990s. The 90s wasn’t our best decade. It was full of shite, to put it bluntly. [...]
