maggi magic sarap and judy ann santos in a dream ad - only seen in dreams

have you seen your dream on tv?


this maggi magic sarap tv commercial featuring popular judy ann santos or juday as endorser is a dream seen on tv. to have juday in ad is a dream not only considering the amount of talent fee that needs to be paid but also because of the fact that juday is still at her peak. she is one of the most popular actresses around with a huge and in many cases rabid following.

pair to the dream of having juday in the ad is the the looks of the ad which is really very good. the production and art designs are excellent with every little meticulously set and every item you see in the ad art directed to perfection.


juday is also in dream looks - every piece of her hair in place, make-up just right making her look clean, nice and beautiful. this is one of the few ads of juday where her real personality comes out - wholesome, happy and beautiful. she does this understated beauty queen walk through stalls in a palengke (a wet public market), with an over-sized bag.


wait a minute..... palengke? what palengke? juday is in a palengke? to do what?


that is where this dream ad bursts.


why in the world will a showbiz superstar, specially someone like judy ann santos go to a palengke? it will not be surprising to know that the time they shot this ad in that palengke is the first time judy ann santos has ever set foot in a palengke in all her life.


on that alone, this ad already suffers from a catastrophic believability problem. judy ann santos must have at least 4 househelp under her employ. and even these househelp most likely do their shopping for food in a supermarket, not in a palengke.


as a superstar, juday may be used to wear clothes like what she is wearing on a daily basis, but very, very few ordinary folks wear the same type of clothes in a palengke. you wouldn't want nice clothes like that smeared with fish or meat blood, not to mention get all the smells of produce, slaughtered chicken and fish to attach themselves on your clothes. these types of clothes is also a magnet for holduppers and crime.


and did you notice the palengke? there is NO palengke in the philippines, not a single one that look like that. the stalls are neatly arranged, everything is clean and it smells real good (ok, that one we imagined). you also see produce hanging from stalls to give the place a nice look. this whole palengke look is just too art directed. the production design staff was just too much, every inch of that ad was drawn and executed to perfection. this palengke is so perfect that a palengke looking like that can only exist in our nightmares.

nestle is obsessive compulsive about branding, seeing the brand names of their products in every frame in their ads, but in this one they relented and now we just see the maggi magic sarap color of yellow. that's the reason why the whole commercial has been given an over-all look of the color yellow.

but this nestle ad is a huge improvement compared to their previous ads of years ago. nestle used to have tv ads where not only did the colors of the brand being advertised is in every shot, the brand name is also displayed prominently. i remember milo commercials where kids who play basketball where uniforms with the milo logo, the board of the basketball ring has the milo logo and the banners around the basketball court has milo logos on them. at least in this ad, they no longer have the brand's logo everywhere, just the brand colors.

this tv ad may look good visually, but it's one that exist only on a production designer's sketch pad and not even in our dreams. it is the farthest from reality. add to the incredible visual look what juday does in this ad makes one really go crazy, judy ann santos will NOT set foot in a palengke to buy food stuff and she will NOT cook a meal for guests. it's just too difficult to believe.

one of the most important principles of celebrity endorsement advertising is credibility and believability. this tv ad ignores that completely. this is one of the worst kind of celebrity endorsement ad where the over-riding principle appear to be - have the face of the endorser in the ad and it will sell.

we often hear actresses who appear naked in movies explain away their behavior as "for art's sake". of course we don't believe them. we know that art has nothing to do with their going naked in movies, it's all about the talent fee they were paid and the hope appearing naked in movies will make them famous.

well, this tv ad is very similar to that situation. they have the looks, the feel and juday doing what she is doing in this ad as "for art's sake", throwing away all attempts to be believable and credible.

and did i mention juday's palengke basket? look at it, it's this huge palengke basket with a red scarf tied around it for effect. duh! nobody carries that basket anymore. they use plastic bayong these days or just any ordinary plastic bag. and please, a red scarf tied around it???!!!

a WAWAM!




view the ad here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D082Lxm7k5Q

pantene's most beautiful wet beauties shine in gold

any woman's product that can make judy ann santos beautiful, i am buying it! that is what this pantene, "the most beautiful" commercial did to me.

the commercial starts with supers that says "the most beautiful" and then we see 4 gorgeous, well yes beautiful women who seem to have just come off from a bronze tanning machine, everything about them - their skin and their clothes were in gold. the ambiance of the room they were in was also in a nice golden hue. (so they were probably still inside the bronze tanning room when they shot the commercial?)

and you do a double take, move closer to the screen when the first beautiful woman speaks. who is she? then the shock of your life, it's judy ann santos. she is beautiful! you quickly make a mental note : find out who the make up artist and director of photography responsible for turning judy ann to a beauty!





this commercial succeeds in convincing you they are beautiful women. never mind that at the opening shot, they had this fine print declaration that the title "beautiful women" came from Preview Magazine's April 2008 issue. watching the commercial (refer to mental note) persuades you to it.

then the tv ad shows the beautiful women talk about how their hair are strong even when wet. apparently hair when wet is at its weakest state. i didn't know that but i believe it, four beautiful women told me so. who can refuse?

it ends with the copy and supers that says "shine. pantene." shine? where did that come from?

and that is the part when some debate must have ensued on. pantene's long term brand equity is "shiny hair". but a huge 99.99% of this ad does not talk about shine. it didn't even show it. what it did was talk about strong hair. my guess is they probably rationalized that by saying the consumer insight is strong hair. ahhhh, well, hmmm..... we will let that go for now because we are still high from looking at those golden beauties.

and that brings us to the strategic question of - is this ad about beautiful women, golden ladies, strong hair or shiny hair?

as for me, hands down it's about beautiful women. after watching this commercial, there is this urgent need to find out the names of the director, the make up artists, the director of photography and the costume and set designer. if they can make judy ann santos look beautiful, i'm buying pantene and hiring them for my next commercial with women talents.

judy ann santos meralco system loss tv commercial

news report say the judy ann santos system loss tv spot was filmed a day before she left for europe. that was what i thought, it was a quick produce tv spot, probably done in her home using an HD camera.

the copywriting is fine, the ice melting analogy to explain system loss is great but the production values showed it was a rush job. the lighting was ok but it was not very professional. more importantly, and this i think is key is judy ann santos was not engaging, she did not elicit sympathy. i think the director gave judy ann santos the wrong directions. the director most likely told judy ann to deliver the lines and look that way because it was a "serious" topic. and that's how judy ann delivered her lines - a straightforward delivery.

but that kind of delivery took away the charm of judy ann santos. she is a tv and movie superstar, she caters to millions of her fans and we don't like to see her as a serious actress when we see her in things other than in her mivies. we all know she is not an engineer, nor an academe nor an economist, the ad agency got her for her popularity as a movie and tv superstar. and we like to see judy ann as warm, amiable and engaging. that's how we want to see her.

this directorial treatment was a bad call for the director.




the controversy over the tv ad rages on. i like the print ad released by meralco where it said the issue is not judy ann santos, the issue is "system loss".

that is precisely correct.


they probably felt the need to release that print ad because of the way pro-administration defenders have been coming out lashing on judy ann santos herself. judy ann is just a commercial talent that was paid to do a job. any talent, known or unknown could have appeared in that commercial and it could have communicated the same things it is doing now.

the pro-administration defenders have been lashing out on judy ann santos herself, taking it too personal which is highly unwarranted.

i suppose this over-reaction and personal attacks on the commercial talent is a tribute to the impact and power of the ad.

caught in the political storm

i agree that garcia and the government were most likely caught flat footed with the juday system loss tv ad. that is very obvious in the way they reacted to the airing of the ad. you see a frenzy of scare tactics, doomsday pronouncements and all types of ridiculous assertions on what the ad was saying, or what it was trying to do and what sins the ad committed. panic time talaga!
that shows you the power of the ad.

garcia and the govt should all grow up. if the juday ad did them some, what's to prevent them from doing an ad themselves?

juday "system loss" tv spot produced by first philippine holdings company

the judy ann santos commercial explaining "system loss" was produced and paid for by first philippine holdings corporation, with the lopezes as majority owners and a major stockholder in meralco.

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Lopez firm defends system loss commercial

The sponsor of the controversial system loss commercial explaining the principle of system loss which starred local actress Judy Ann Santos, defended the commercial saying that it only wants to simplify a very technical term.

Early this week, a number of critics bashed the commercial, in which Ms. Santos explained system loss by comparing it to a bag of melting ice, saying that it misleads people.
In a statement, Lopez-owned First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPHC) clarified that it - not the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) — had paid for the advertisement.

"As a major shareholder of Meralco, we are very concerned with the inaccurate information being circulated in the media. Certain groups are using technical concepts and complicated issues to manipulate public opinion, discredit Meralco or the Lopez Group." FPHC’s statement said.

FPHC further said that the commercial only sought to explain the salient points of system loss. Legal provisions and regulations are often hard to understand but they have to be relied upon in this instance. FPHC also said that it only meant to make things simpler for the people by using the "electricity-melting ice" analogy.

"There is no intent to deceive or confuse but simply an effort to clarify, within the constraints of the broadcast medium."

Further, it stressed that Ms. Santos was not misled into doing the advertisement.
"In our desire to bring accurate information to Meralco’s four million customers, we asked Ms. Santos to assist us in our information drive. Ms. Santos believed in the message we wanted to communicate, she was not forced or misled to do the advertisement," FPHC noted.

This as Manila Rep. Bienvenido M. Abante, Jr. (6th district) said he will look at the possibility that Ms. Santos violated the Consumers Protection Act when she appeared in the controversial advertisement.

He further said that local celebrities should choose their endorsements wisely especially if they concern the public’s welfare.

Yesterday, Executive Secretary Eduardo R. Ermita said that the palace did not mind Meralco’s decision to use Ms. Santos to explain the systems losses it charges to its consumers and was not surprised by Meralco’s move to rebuild its image with its consumers.

"That is an effort to justify their position. However, the viewers will still decide to believe [them or not]." — Ava Kashima K. Austria

http://www.bworldonline.com/BW060708/content.php?id=042

judy ann santos' meralco system loss tv spot

there is nothing earth shaking about the judy ann santos "system loss" tv ad for meralco from an advertising stand point. it's a run of the mill, quick produce tv commercial like most of the ads we see on tv. it won't win any advertising award anytime soon or later.

the commercial itself, copywriting, concept and production values are unremarkable but the marketing and communication strategy or thinking behind it is brilliant.

here is a background snap shot : there is an on-going media war between the government and winston garcia versus meralco on supposedly the fight for the lowering of power rates in the country, which happens to be the second most expensive in asia.

it first started as a media war, but it became a real world corporate battle when garcia, doing a 180 degree turn from previous announcements that he does not intend to take over meralco actually attempted a hostile take-over of meralco during the annual stockholders meeting that meralco had a few weeks ago. garcia came to the meeting armed not with plans and intelligent arguments but with an infirmed SEC order preventing the counting of the proxy votes casted in favor of the majority stockholders but was thwarted by brilliant lawyering on the part of the meralco legal team. of course it did not stop there, the media war continues to this day.

at the heart of the issue is the so called "system loss" where meralco passes on to consumers the losses they incur in transmitting the power from the meralco source to the individual residential and commercial users. system loss is not unique to meralco nor to the power industry. it is a global and national practice among power disrtributors. even other manufacturing businesses pass their own version of system loss to consumers. also by law, meralco is allowed to pass a system loss equivalent to 9.5% to its customers.

the juday tv spot is a brilliant marketing and communication move because it dramatically tips the scale in favor meralco through a totally unexpected means. i think the juday tv spot caught winston garcia and the government flat footed. i don't think winston garcia and the government were able to anticipate or even imagine meralco will launch such a media attack through a tv spot featuring juday.

before the juday tv spot, the media war or the battle for winning public opinion was waged through countless press releases, daily press and tv interviews and full page print ads from both camps. the juday tv spot was a refreshing take and totally out of the box but powerful.

first, this is probably the first time in the history of philippine advertising where a national issue that had political and economic implications was explained to the public through a tv spot during a non-election year. political ads we have had before cannot be compared to the juday spot, the political ads were meant to sell the candidates, the juday tv spot is meant to explain to the public some very technical component of the electric bills we all pay.



the use of juday is also a brilliant move and very pinoy. in other countries, topics of this sort would have have featured compelling visuals to illustrate the point or experts in the field like well known engineers, economists or professors doing the talking in the ad. but, we are in the philippines, right? philippine heroes or figures of authority do not come from such esoteric fields, they come from the interview set of boy abunda's The Buzz!

juday reeks of masa! and i mean that as a compliment for the ad agency who chose her. i am guessing that system loss is difficult to understand for most consumers. the use of the block of ice melting while on transit from plant to consumer is also a brilliant creative idea. it simplifies and eloquently communicates what system loss, down to the lowest level or median level of the consumer mind. a simple idea or explanation delivered by a simple woman, juday, admired by simple folks. brilliant!

more than the choice of juday and the use of the melting block of ice mnemonic device in the ad, what trumps these two brilliant components of the effort is the brilliant marketing and communications strategic move of winning the battle for public opinion through a tv spot over and beyond the press releases and interviews.

this effort puts meralco on the driver seat in this battle for public opinion. meralco is now defining the issues and doing it very well. winston garcia and the govt needs to play catch up now.

not only is this ad historic for the philippine advertising industry, it can be historic for the whole country in the way battles are waged to win public opinion.