nestle's "trio" ice cream tv spot : how a lazy creative team wasted P5M+ in talent fees

this is nestle's "trio" ice cream, a three-flavored ice cream that nestle is selling now. it's gone big time with sharon cuneta appearing in its tv commercial.

nestle must have had good experience on this product that they will be launching a second 3-flavored ice cream, that will be named "scrambelicious". that's the product nestle had a contest on to get a name for with the famous give-me-a-name internet effort that has been very much discussed here.

i'm guessing that these types of products are selling because consumers view it as good value for money - people probably think they are getting 3 flavors for the price of 1. this variety in a single tub could be seen as very much "sulit". the philippine market is a highly value-conscious market.

will their 2nd 3-flavored ice cream with a funny brand name, "scrambelicious" do well in this market? also noticed that "scrambelicious" will be priced much lower than this one - P80.00/tub vs the P149.00/tub pricing of trio. scrambelicious seem to be targeting a wider socio eco class, appealing to a real broad based market, from the AB to true broad C and maybe even parts of D. i don't know what the incidence of refrigerators is across the socio-eco class but its safe to assume it's very high among the ABC and some among the D would have a refrigerator in their homes.

this ad is one of the millions of tv ads sharon cuneta appear in. over the years, we have seen sharon thin, endearing and pretty to fat, ugly and ewww! and now, we see sharon as just a bit on the chubby side but this time with this cute little daughter of hers. from a weight perspective, sharon does not look too bad here.

the baby is cute though! the director of the ad knows how to direct little girls in commercials. the secret in directing toddlers in commercials is to get the toddlers to pop their eyes as wide as they can. that's how they make toddlers appear their cutest on tv. in this ad, you see the daughter's eyes at its widest ever and voila - we have an extremely adorable little sharon. kudos to the director for knowing his job.

now, on the serious side of ad analysis.

this ad is simple and very single-minded. so, this ad is not a WAWAM!? what? a non-WAWAM! ad appearing here?? now, wait a minute, while our advertising gurus will say those are good things, that's not how i mean it. plrease read on.

it's simple, yes, in fact too simple that it's already bare.

it's a predictable and non-ownable story line of people stealing a snack at night, creeping down to the kitchen and stealing food, only to be "caught" by another family member and both ending up as enjoying the late night snack together. that's a story line we have seen in hundreds of thousands of ads (to borrow a descriptor nestle used for their internet effort) and not just in ads but also in movies. it's already a very trite story line.

not only is the story line more common than common sense, the copy, the exchange between mother and daughter is even more common. the dialogue is very straight forward, definitely forgettable, nothing memorable. it's almost like dialogue two ordinary people, like you and me who earn minimum wage to slightly higher than minimum wage exchange on an ordinary, non-event day.

should that be the case? look, we are talking here of none other than the mega-star of philippine show business and the mega-baby! they are not humans like us! and not being human like us, means they speak in non-ordinary words. their words are supposed to be magical, the type where you see stardust when they speak. or at least memorable! hello?

you saw the ad, right? quick, tell me, what did they say to each other?

i bet you were not able to quote it verbatim. and that is where the problem lie. this is sharon cuneta who gave us fantastically memorable lines, if she did not deliver them, she was in the scene when they were delivered. we associate sharon with almost showbiz biblical movie lines like "You're nothing but a second-rate, trying hard copycat." or "Kung saan, kailan, at paanong labanan, magpasabi ka lang. Hindi kita uurungan!". she is the mega-star and the mega-baby, they can speak in tongues and we will understand and love them for it or in poetry!

well, not in this commercial.

it is single-minded not in the sense of message delivery, but in the sense of being single minded in making a sale for the brand on the sole basis of sharon cuneta alone! the creative team seem to think they did not have to do any work on this ad, they did not have to do any thinking. heck, they sure did not think they needed to think of any memorable copy line for the ad! they were thinking that all they needed to do was to put sharon in the commercial, and it will sell on its own! face value lang ni sharon, ok na!

look at the ad concept - it's one of the most boring, most predictable slice of life ad one can think of. and the copy lines are lines you know college students with zero advertising experience can write even when they are sleep. in fact, i bet a lot of college students can think of better copy lines than whats on that ad. the creative team who developed these ads, simply put, were LAZY!

when i picked that ad up in you tube, one of the comments made there, obviously from a sharon fan, was that the mega-baby is the cutest of all babies in the world! (that make sense given the widest eyes shots done by the director of the ad) one was even gushing that in this ad, finally the mega-baby had speaking lines.

and that is what the creative team missed in this ad! the creative team was so lazy to think of creative concepts that involved the mega-mother and the mega-baby in a deeper, more creative story line! this could have been a slam bang winner, had the creative team made an ad that played on the emotion that the audience would have invested in the mega-star having the mega-baby in the ad. dapat kurot sa puso involving mom and baby! imagine the mega-baby delivering blockbuster memorable lines and inter-acting, exchanging kurot-sa-puso lines with the mega-star! certainly, the mega-star can act. and the mega-baby could have been directed to act! that could have made advertising history!

as that poster in you tube said - this is the first time they saw the mega-baby had speaking lines! people hearing the mega-baby speak for the first time in an ad, mouthing memorable lines would have brought mega-tears to its audience and, mega-sales!

the creative team had 2 great talents in their hands and all they could think of is a trite story line! how could they miss such a golden opportunity here? the creative team totally missed on that one. why? only because they were lazy! yes, this ad is a WAWAM! in my files.