Brands kill me sometimes. Assume for a second someone told you beforehand that your Super Bowl ads would rank 27th or 28th out of the 57 or so spots scheduled to run. They wouldn’t cause controversy and they certainly wouldn’t result in any negative PR. You’d say hell yeah, let’s do it. One thing I doubt you would you be though, is so upset by those results you’d put the account up for review.Or would you?
Careerbuilder was apparently. After watching the Super Bowl ad results and not liking what they saw, that’s what they did. Upon hearing this, C-K said see ya’. Now, I always felt the chimp/monkey/ape thing still had legs. This year’s ratings for the new jungle-Survivor games spots seem to bear this out. Still, I side with the agency as usual and I have to wonder how much the brand pushed them to walk away from chimp/monkey/ape with lasers thing.
One thing this shows is how much emphasis brands put on the typical Super Bowl spot to perform, to be the brand’s hero. Both brand and agency had to know it was a little risky to walk away from ‘chimp’ equity. (C’mon, you’d kill to find a use for the phrase ‘chimp equity’ too.) Results could’ve gone either way, but still you figure, how bad could it be? Looking back, were they so bad the account had to go up for review? Nobody got fired over the King AHA spot, certainly a bigger crime. Careerbuilder spots came out in the middle of the pack, so what?
Something else at work here perhaps?
(I’ve also previously said the USA Today poll is extremely misleading because it uses only 238 volunteers in Houston and McClean, VA. Based on that, how much stock can be placed on the results? Mean to tell me they can’t find 30 people in 10 different major metros each to poll instead? Let’s see, hmmm... Houston and McClean, or Chicago, NYC, LA, SF, Kansas City, Seattle, Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis and Phoenix. Yup, I can see how using only two cities is far more representive of America’s consumer mindset. C-K should be pissed. Wouldn’t you be if one of your major clients decided to use that kind of flawed measuring stick as the basis for determining your future relationship?)
It also shows how some brands don’t stand behind the creative they approve, just like Mars and Snickers failed to. Careerbuilder obviously expected it to perform as well as last year though. Hey, like all brands, it’s their dime, right? Consider another dynamic at work: the Super Bowl is the only time of year where ads collectively go up against each like some Daytona 500 ad race, each brand competing for ‘consumer mindshare’ unlike any other time of the year. (Sorry, I put out the yellow caution flag for use of clichéd marketing term.)
Where else though during the year do ads go head to head trying to be remembered as being the funniest, the saddest, etc.? Point is, these spots run any other time during the year and we’re probably not having this discussion. Only by juxtaposing it next to Bud’s annual horse parade though does it then come off as missing the mark.
The creative certainly wasn’t suicide by Snickers either, the brand had nothing to apologize for. At worst, it was just a case of ads trying to live up to our collective predisposition in seeing a chimp/monkey/ape aim a laser at a groin. (And cute puppies. America likes its cute puppies.) Still, we couldn’t help it. We had those damn lasers stuck in our heads.
Even if you set aside the three hour, once a year Super Bowl ad orgy, a brand has to know that there just may be some spots that resonate better with consumers than others. You may have decent creative–but someone just has something a little more cuter, more memorable. You have to wonder if Careerbuilder factored this in.
Wonder too if they took an ad out on their own site for the new agency search.
Tags: Cramer-Krasselt, Careerbuilder
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