And here I thought it was an ice cream spot. Unilever continues the product placement hubris with another epic, dead horse beating UBEIO. (I almost worked an A in there for a vowel full house!) The spot? Seamless. The CGI? Awesome. The concept? Plays off the name perfectly: Smooth & Dreamy. Ice cream so smooth, you want to dream. (Get it?) Dream that you’re back in a time when things sucked less.
The oh so hot actress but not so hot she melts the ice cream in a non-sultry Sex in the City Lite™ way? Check! Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock. Oh, wait, now it’s starting to make sense. An NBC show. Fresh from a string of UBEIO
(They may even warrant the coining of a new term when placement fails: Flacement. (Flacid + placement.)
As for the theme, yes, it’ll no doubt shed tears for those old classics and the single women who can’t get a date now that craigslist is curtailing their
So ennywy, there’s been a focus recently on bringing together different entertainment experiences under the guise of branded entertainment. Some brands nail it like BMW Films, Freixenet and Ikea. Others... eh. By going this route, they’ve missed the essence of what this brand and category should be about. There’s a perfect place from which to approach it that a few of us took it recently. *cue shameless plug*
Along with their previous spots** which seem like they’ll provide a nice bump in the number of 70s Hits downloads on iTunes, this one will no doubt be held up at some conference next year as another example of what successful Unilever brands are doing with content like this. Someone from the agency will then comment anonymously that this spot is awesome, don’t hate!
Things is, I don’t hate. But I do the know the difference between doing something cool with original material—and mashups of really outdated movies using really good CGI as your only strategy. (Seriously, the only legal use of a Gone With The Wind theme should be the dog calender photo shoot at the end of Best in Show.)
“We’re getting the costumer to spend more time with the brand” is actually a decent goal. I just didn’t think it meant spending more time with Clark Gable too. Congrats on losing most of your male audience?
Unilever, when you’re done dreaming, gimmee me a shout.
*And I hate the word kudos. Worse than preggers and foodie. No, really, I do.
**Awwww. Someone replaced the American version of this spot that I linked to on YouTube and replaced it with a French version and different music.
3 comments:
That totally failed to connect. Instead of that cheesy, canned spin blur transition, they should have had John Cleese sitting at the desk saying, "And now for something completely different." Worst of all, the part that had nothing to do with the product was far more interesting than the sell.
How hard is selling ice cream? It's friggin' ice cream!
You never told me you didn't like "preggers."
@pbb - I coulda been okay with Cleese.
@AN - No, what I said was, I don’t like being pregnant.
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