I have no personal stake in the success or failure of the Cadbury chocolate company. Is this a good commercial, in the sense that it will help them sell more chocolate? I don’t care.
It’s just a cool little film, for reasons I have explained before.
Yes, we’re talking about it, but as a result of their decision to make an ad that has nothing to do with the product, even in passing, which is a practice that annoys the crap out of me, I’m now slightly less likely to buy their products.
Have I said how much I love this board recently?
When I first saw the clip, I had no idea what it was for, but loved it right away as a short film, then my eyes wandered to the border of the window and realized that it was an ad of some sort. Not being a brit, I did not recognize “Glass and a half full Productions” as being linked to the Cadbury brand, which I do recognize.
Such an optimistic outlook on life seems to be getting rarer these days, and I found the idea of the glass not only being half full, but a glass and a half full, to resonate with me in a similar fasion to the “Life is Good™” product line, which I also spend my money on regularly.
It was not until after all of this went through my head as I clicked around in my usual exploratory surfing habit, that I realized it was an ad for Cadbury, and that the connection to simple pleasures, like a chunk of chocolate melting in your mouth, or playing air-drums to Phil Collins, was a compelling and refreshing approach to advertising.
Aren’t you even a bit stirred by the nuttiness, the fun, the joie de vivre of it. It’s immensely enervating music played with subtlety and energy by a - gorilla?
It’s a bit like being slapped by a wet fish in Monty Python: just totally silly - but fun.
I do wonder if it’s an American/British thing: we do have slightly different senses of humour.
No, I’m British and think it’s totally unexceptional. I mean, I don’t think it’s a particularly bad advert, it just doesn’t seem particularly groundbreaking or outstanding. I am mystified as to how it took on some sort of cult status.
OK - the British/American thing may be not the whole story. It’s more obviously a personal thing. Some people like wacky - some don’t.
I’m with the people who don’t get it. Having spent time around film schools, it just reminds me of the typical first-year students attempt at surreal and innovative, but is just pointless crap thrown together.
Whether the product is prominent in an ad is less important to me than if the ad is annoying. This one did it for me, and I don’t care if the chocolate is featured. I’m much more likely to look favorably on a company that is creative and does its best to not annoy people with advertising, rather than those that just have a ton of product placement.
I have never, for example, mistaken a McDonald’s commercial for another product. Nor have I ever seen or heard one of their commercials that I enjoyed. In fact, the only one I can remember right now was a radio ad back in 2001-02, that had a rap jingle. There were 2 versions, and I can still recall a couple of the lines. They’re in my top 5 worst/most annoying ads of all time. I injured myself leaping out of bed one morning trying to shut the radio off when my alarm tuned into it. Good job, McD’s. You made me remember your product. However, you made me associate hate with your product. Great advertising, there.
in the us there were a series of commercials based around a quarterback and his football team. the quarterback suffers a concussion during the game. he is asked the typical series of questions, the last being, “what is your name?”
i’m batman!!! he answers.
what was the product that commercial was selling?
we would discuss it for weeks at work. everytime a new one came out, deep discussion. none of us… not one of an office of over 100 people, could remember what the product was. (hint: it wasn’t cadbury.) and yes, i surveyed nearly all 100 at one point or another.
great commercials… not so good with the branding.
Yeah, but is this really the point of advertising? It seems to me that it doesn’t function at the conscious level most of the time. I mean, if a company presented a really funny commercial, it might change your mind favorably toward the company. But for the most part, when you’re walking down the chocolate aisle, you’re not going to say to yourself, “Well, Cadbury had a funny ad about a gorilla eating batman, and Hershey’s only had girls wrestling in chocolate, so I’m going with the gorilla this time!” It’s more that your brain saw the word Cadbury sometime in the last week or month or whatever, so maybe as soon as you turn down the chocolate aisle, the first word to pop into your head is Cadbury.
We make conscious decisions about commercials on products we don’t know much about. If I needed flooring, the only name I know is Empire. Maybe I’d call them, maybe not, but for a lot of people just “knowing” one name is enough. But on huge brand products, Coke, Pepsi, McD’s, Burger King, unless the ad actively makes you hate the company, it seems to me that it’s just getting the name in your head so that it’s your first association with “I’m hungry,” or “I’m thirsty.” No one consciously decides that they like giant, freakish, scary kings instead of giant-shoed, pedophile, grease-painted clowns, and use that as their basis for deciding where to get a burger.
the problem was— no one remembered the product. the commercial was not selling footballs, quarterbacks, anything remotely connected to football. also it was not selling anything connected to batman.
out of 100 people you would think someone would remember what the commercial was for. they were great commercials, people would quote from them. no idea about the company or product.
The context is not an apples to apples comparison though. With a viral web-based clip, they are not relying solely on a viewer being able to remember what was being sold once they walk away from the TV. The clip, as launched, was attached to an interactive web experience.
Sheesh, people…the ad seemed very straight-forward to me. The anticipation of waiting for the chocolate…the way his nostrils flared just a bit as if trying to catch the scent of a Cadbury bar…the sheer force of the desire. I personally will not be able to hear that song again without getting a little antsy for chocolate, the way that tune makes me a little antsy for…well, something else good is all I’ll commit to here…You just know the minute the song is done he’s going to rip into some good chocolate (though I really wish it was for dark chocolate, since milk chocolate no longer agrees with me…)
But that’s just my point. No one consciously remembered that the commercial was for Cadbury. Even if they had, would it really have caused you, the next time you were in the grocery story, to say to yourself, “Wow, that Cadbury commercial about batman was really funny. I’m gonna buy me some Cadbury right now!” It seems more likely that your subconscious is going to notice that your conscious mind is in the chocolate section, and say, “Hey, the last time my conscious mind was looking at something related to chocolate, the word Cadbury came up.”
Now, just like in the gorilla ad, there was only the visual of the word Cadbury in the ad. It was trying to get your subconscious to remember a product using only one sense. Had it also said the word, and maybe pictured some melted chocolate, your subconscious might also have associated hearing and taste with Cadbury from that ad.
Maybe it wasn’t the best ad in the world. But you have to worry about the annoyance factor-- there have been products with such godawful ads that I actively avoided their products, even though I remembered their names and ads clearly (unfortunately).
None of that changes the fact that you’re just supposed to pick up on the brand on a subconscious level. At least with what I’m postulating here, trying to get someone to buy something like chocolate by making rational, logical arguments, or by having funny commercials just isn’t going to work. It seems to me that that’s not why people buy what they do.
Perhaps you missed the part where I said it was fine as a short film, just not as a commercial for chocolate. I could see it as a commercial for, say… iTunes. I tend to have a more British sense of humor than an American one, but that doesn’t mean that I think just any old funny thing should be called a commercial for a random, unrelated product.
I love wacky. But I don’t see this video as particularly wacky. But then, I’m from America where we have grown men dressed as fruit selling underpants, so my scale may be off. Person in gorilla suit doing just about anything = pretty common, even cliché.
Well they backfired on this one for me. Yes, there are plenty of annoying ads that have lots of product placement, I’m not denying that. But I’m also annoyed by ads that never tell you what the product is that they’re advertising. If I know a company does that, I’m less likely to buy their products just because they’ve annoyed me.
I love it!
It draws you in and makes you wonder what the heck is this about and you stay until the end. Drama, suspense. Laughter. Gorilla!
It’s perfect.
Do they still make Cadbury’s with booze in them? Use to be able to get them in Canuckistan ( for my Canuck-born grandma) when I was a wee lass, but haven’t seen ( or looked) in years.
‘Silly’ rather than ‘wacky’, perhaps, is a better description of the advert. But that isn’t what makes it funny, anyway, not by itself, in a simple ‘look, man dressed as gorilla’ way (I’ve never felt so at home in a thread 
). It’s the earnestness with which it’s presented - the overblown ‘glass-and-a-half productions’ opening, the closeup revealing the gorilla’s face, the closed eyes, deep breaths - and the contrast to the silliness of the drum entry. Also bear in mind the contempt plenty of people have for Phil Collins (example).
You’ve got some chocolate issues.