URC's hunt's pork & beans ridiculous use of a "consumer insight" : part 4

i've been wondering about it and this is pure speculation on my part (or if this was a report done by an account manager, it is called "competitive ad analysis") - why did URC's hunt's pork & beans rice vs bread tv ad suffer a fatal flaw?

the concept of that tv ad begins with the idea of rice not being available, then makes a sale on hunt's pork & beans can be enjoyed not only with rice but also with bread. we will no longer go into discussing the logic, actually the absence of logic or even common sense in the way the copy was written (discussed fully in this post : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/2008/06/hunts-pork-beans-tv-ad-you-said-what.html), but will stay on why and how the tv ad used the "no more rice" idea as a take-off point. we will center the discussion on that point.

my conclusion is this, but if you find it hilarious and ridiculous go ahead and find it that way, because i think that is exactly what it is - this tv ad wanted to exploit the true to life crisis the country is facing - the rice crisis, or specifically the rice shortage in this country. they opened the commercial that way to grab the attention of the audience. given the peculating attitude among the audience, it's a powerful opening.

as far as that is concerned, it actually worked! as i have written in the previous post, this ad immediately caught my attention after the first sentence of the audio - "mom, there is no more rice." the rice shortage is in everybody's mind. unfortunately, after that sentence, i started laughing and totally tuned off from the commercial after the third sentence. because from that time on, i found the ad didn't make sense at all.

the "no more rice idea" i think is actually being used in this ad as a "consumer insight" and the set up for the ad. and that is where all the problems of the ad began.

in the first place, "no more rice" is not a consumer insight, it's a consumer finding on attitude, concern or fear. as written in the "anti-WAWAM!"section, any consumer finding will first need to be transformed into something else to make it into a consumer insight. that was not done here.

the second problem and this is as fatal as the first one, is that the "no more rice" idea is so far removed from the product sale for hunt's pork & beans that it is an almost alien idea. in other words it's actually unusable in this ad. putting that unusable idea eventually harmed the commercial.

using the "no more rice" idea created so many problems in the delivery of the sale for the ad. the creatives were so adamant at using this idea that they forced it into the commercial like pushing a square peg into a round hole, resulting to a warped sense of logic.

using it meant they had to go take a round about logic to make sure they will not alienate a large part of their consumers who eat the product with rice. saying the product can also be enjoyed with bread is good, but with the opening of the ad with the "no more rice" kine, to complete the "logic", the delivery of the message resulted gaping holes in the presentation of the thought.

the problem of this commercial, it's fatal flaw, is in the use of a consumer insight that is actually not an insight, but just a powerful consumer concern and one that does not lend itself to making a sale for the brand's proposition.

in other words, it's a ridiculous use of a "consumer insight". or as what we call it here, it's a WAWAM!