Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Forget the Snake; 2013 is the Year of the Goat (at least when it comes to Advertising).



Make no mistake; the real winner of Super Bowl XLVII was Doritos.

Enter: the goat.

And just when we thought advertisers had beaten the animal spokesperson strategy to death! Seriously though, did you think there was anyone left in all the animal kingdom who could feel fresh and new?!

Doritos’ “Goat 4 Sale” spot was a pure genius.

Devoid of any real words, it introduced us to a whole new vernacular; the goat scream.
In case you haven’t seen it (what, do you live under a rock?):
Not only did the 30-second spot go viral, it triggered a tidal wave of social media love for goats everywhere.

Search “Screaming Goat” on YouTube and you’ll find over 194,000 results; compilations of live video from the farm and screams fit to pop songs and Oprah Winfrey.

8 weeks later and we still can’t get enough.

You can imagine our excitement when we first learned that Mountain Dew had released a goat spot.

You wanna see it? You ready? Here it is:
What the…?

The first eight seconds (that’s 26% of the entire campaign) are spent on the guy just trying to get his date to notice the damn thing.

Then 10 seconds of the goat not wanting the Mountain Dew (waitress gets slapped).
5 seconds of the goat wanting the Mountain Dew (waitress gets slapped again).
and 7 seconds of Mountain Dew euphoria, (more slapping) ::end scene::.

To be continued? No thanks. Like the goat during the first half of the commercial, we “don’t want it.”

It's like Mountain Dew is looking over Doritos' shoulder; copying all the wrong answers on the test.

In what ways does MD miss the mark?

No scream.
The scream is what makes the Doritos commercial. It's the big finish that breaks through the monotony of the crunches and grabs you. It elicits laughter. The scream is what we’re all Googling, YouTube-ing, tweeting, re-tweeting and sharing to facebook; why even use a goat if you’re not going to use the scream!?

No depth.
Some loose assemblage of a story would be nice. It’s insane for the sake of being insane …and nothing more. The crazy creative fits the brand’s eccentric personality but the character is crude without being clever and fails to impress.

Did you know the goat is supposed to be a girl? “Felicia” is her name. We’re all about breaking gender roles, but why impart more confusion with a tux and male voice?
It’s no contest.

I guess not all goats are created equal. In the game of goat – Doritos: 1, Mountain Dew: 0.