This time of year is all about conclusions. I packed away my notebooks for the semester, gathered my belongings for Christmas vacation, and recollected this years improvements. AdWeek's blog AddFreak concluded the year by displaying the 30 Freakiest Ads of 2010. Why not the most heart-warming ads of 2010? Or the most beautiful? This section is no surprise to me. People want freaky, whether it be gory, sexual, or bizarre, this is how brands garner consumer attention. Number four on the list, was True Clean Towel's commercial depicts a man rubbing a disembodied scrotum all over himself, as if it were a towel. The commercial (below) is disturbing, and strangely effective. True Clean Towel gets right to the point: "know where your towel has been." The commercial is nonetheless enhanced by the classical music in the background.
Long adored candy brand, Snicker's introduced another bizarre commercial which made it to number five on the list. The character, "The Snickers Lady" who looks more like Divine from Pink Flamingos than a typical brand mascot, eerily touches the face of the shopper and throws Snickers into her shopping cart. The logic behind this seems unusual. Why would you want to scare someone into buying candy? Alas, this is the platform for most brands today. Provocation is used as a form of stimulation. A model eating a Snickers would simply be too trite. Snickers is aggressively (like the Snickers lady herself) telling you to buy Snickers. This is no longer the age of passivity.
The National Domestic Hotline's commercial won first place. To deem this ad as "freaky" is only to reduce it. This commercial has a strong message, and although I initially put off by the visuals, the ad has a way of blending what is provocative, and what is legitimate. Young & Rubicam (The Agency that designed it) used provocation to depict something quite real. The graphic content, is only graphic in the sense that it is present. There is no real violence depicted, so in that way it isn't off-putting. Ultimately, the sadness of the ad, triumphs over the provocation.
I have always felt frustrated by the lack of subtlety in advertising. But through these ads, I have found that it is not only necessary at times, but often effective. Whether these ads are humorous, confusing, or even sad, they are reflections of our culture, and what grabs us as consumers.
