It was produced on spec. It seems doubtful it ever aired anywhere, and Pepsi probably didn’t actually buy it. It cost the ad agency or production company something to create it, but ads like that which are produced on spec are really ads for the ad agency or production company, not the ostensible product. If Pepsi looked at it and said, “No thanks, that’s way too morbid, but you seem very creative and the piece had good production values, let’s talk about you making some more traditional ads for us”, then it’s money very well spent.
By scads of potential soft drink buyers are you referring to the people in this thread? The OP didn’t even recall which brand of soft drink it is and most of the conversation was about locating it / questioning if it even exists. Are you alluding to the “as long as people talk about it, it’s effective” fallacy?
In any event, it is not good work, IMHO.
It might help to explain what “produced on spec” means, in advertising. To me, those words sound like they mean that the customer presented a checklist of requirements for an ad, and that the ad company then, instead of giving their creativity full rein, followed that checklist exactly. But that seems like the opposite of what happened here.
Spec in this instance means “speculation” not “specification.”
Ad agency is working on the speculation that their commercial will be bought. Or at least to showcase their skills so that they can be hired to make other commercials.
Yeah, you usually hear the term in reference to scripts. Something you make first, then look for somebody to buy it later.
Yep, the word is used in a number of industries. In my days as a photojournalist, we did many assignments on spec. You’d go out and do a story, finish it, and shop it around, hoping to find a buyer, as opposed to pitching a story, getting the green light from a specific publication and guaranteed funds for travel, expenses, and the story. We’d sometimes do that when we were already out in the field doing a contracted job for someone else and come up with an extra story or two to shop around for some extra cash. Or me and a writer would pick a place we’d like to visit and try to drum up some stories to have the trip pay for itself and then some.
So, in other words, it’s not a product you’ve been commissioned to do in advance, but I product you’ve finished and shopped around (though in the case of a Pepsi ad, there’s only one place to shop it to.)
The principal actors only very briefly appear in shot with the Pepsi logo, so presumably you could cut this commercial into a commercial for something else without a ton of effort. Like, make it a motorcycle commercial by splicing in some motorcycle footage on his drive, or whatever.
Absolute thread-winner here, for several reasons.
Yes, exactly. It doesn’t even really matter if Pepsi actually winds up buying the spot. The point is to showcase their skills and, as the kids used to say, create buzz, in the hopes that someone actually commissions them to produce an ad campaign, whether that’s Pepsi, another company entirely, or even another ad agency that subcontracts out work to them.
I’d bet the agency didn’t really have any hopes that Pepsi would buy the spot. They probably deliberately created a “provocative” piece that they knew would likely never actually air, but that they hoped would generate buzz, and get people in the industry talking about them, and thinking about them when discussing a new ad campaign.
That commercial will not cause me to start drinking Pepsi, no matter how much I like it. So I disagree.