Wellmade Inc.'s Speed Babad piolo pascual "musical" tv spot is, well, not well made

we see this tv spot of speed babad (soak) often on tv. they got the media money, but how we wish they took some of it to make a good TVC ad?

this is one more of those no-brains celebrity endorser tv ad where they think all it takes to make a good ad is to simply shove a celebrity's face into the ad and it will generate business for the brand. with so many of these types of celebrity endorser ads in philippine advertising, the conclusion is that the whole industry has lost it's sense of purpose and has forgotten what makes celebrity endorser ads work versus other types of ad formats.

this one has piolo pascual, the country's celebrity matinee idol. yes, that is the first question you ask yourself - what has piolo pascual, a male, got to do with washing clothes. we are not even talking about the washing machine type, we are talking of hand-washing. probably anywhere from 99.0% to 99.99% of clothes washing in this country are done by females.

obviously, this ad has just violated one of the most important principles of celebrity endorser ads by putting a celebrity endorser who do not hold any sort of authority and even experience on the product the ad is selling. the reason they put piolo in that ad has nothing to do with enhancing the brand image or product efficacy, but rather he is in that commercial because he is famous among women. it's using a celebrity endorser for the sake of using one.

this ad fails a second time, please view the ad.

the location of the ad is on a river by the mountains. what???

we see piolo on a raft going to where the women where and throughout the commercial we see mountains and trees on the background. this is not comedy, but the location of the ad made me laugh.

are we to believe piolo travelled miles upon miles on that river on a raft to reach the women? and are women who wash clothes on the river really look like that and dress that way? not only that, they had swimming pool lounge chairs and orange juice with ice up in the river of a mountainous area.

it makes sense that they situate the brand in clothes washing by the river. based on research, a certain percentage of clothes washed in the rural areas are actually done by the river using the water from the river. so from a marketing stand point, that can make sense.

but that legitimate marketing thinking is all thrown out down the river by using piolo pascual and those women looking like that in this commercial. the women all looked liked commercial models or celebrities themselves, something like maybe less than 0.5% of actual women who do hand washing by the river look like.

they also can't expect us to believe that women who look like that, dress like that and most likely belong to the AB socio-eco class actually do hand washing of their clothes (they have washing machines); and that they do it themselves (they have maids to do the machine washing of clothes), and that they do it by the river in the mountains (they rarely go there, to pass through it on their way to their vacation house in baguio)???

this ad has lost all semblance of believability and credibility.

that has been totally lost that i did not want to bother to listen to the copy in the ad. but i had to.

it positions speed babad as the better alternative to hand-washing, to do soaking instead to allow the women to relax and get out of the losyang (frump). they use a common term, "power whitener" as reason why. we are sure that has been used by other detergents in the past, perhaps in the 60s and 70s. (hahaha)

they also use a very common product freight - a magnifying glass showing "dirt" being removed from the microscopic meshes of the cloth. again a device that has been most likely used in the 60s and 70s.

what do we have here? let me count the ways on why we think this is a WAWAM!

• the use of a celebrity endorser who does not contribute to the sale
• the use of women talents who do not at all look like the actual target users, who most unlikely do not hand wash clothes and certainly not do so by the river in the mountains
• the use of a non-original reason why, circa 60s and 70s
• the use of a non-original product demo, circa 60s and 70s

we don't know how and where this ad connects with its target consumers. what a waste of advertising money!