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

new balckberry storm - storming its own brand equity into bits

i don't own a blackberry, but i thought this review at the new york times has an excellent insight on brand equity.

No Keyboard? And You Call This a BlackBerry?
by: David Pogue
The New York Times

Research in Motion (R.I.M.), the company that brought us the BlackBerry, has been on a roll lately. For a couple of years now, it’s delivered a series of gorgeous, functional, supremely reliable smartphones that, to this day, outsell even the much-adored iPhone.

Here’s a great example of the intelligence that drives R.I.M.: The phones all have simple, memorable, logical names instead of incomprehensible model numbers. There’s the BlackBerry Pearl (with a translucent trackball). The BlackBerry Flip (with a folding design). The BlackBerry Bold (with a stunning design and faux-leather back).

Well, there’s a new one, just out ($200 after rebate, with two-year Verizon contract), officially called the BlackBerry Storm.

But I’ve got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud.

The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touch-screen BlackBerry. That’s right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch-screen mania, R.I.M. has created a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard.

Hello? Isn’t the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/technology/personaltech/27pogue.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1227848400&en=5a50becfbe5bac73&ei=5087%0A

the question the author asked - "what? a blackberry without a keyboard?" is excellent in terms of the most fundamental and strategic question on brand equity. the last paragraph says it all - "isn't the thumb keyboard the defining feature of the blackberry". yes, the thumb keyboard is the very core of what the blackberry is all about.



the blackberry storm, with it's touch screen is obviously an attempt to match and answer apple's iphone. since the launch of the iphone, the market has been looking for the iphone killer.


the intent is fine. but what is not right and in fact most likely will cause an implosion to blackberry is that they are attempting to kill the successful iphone by removing the brand's strategic core of the thumb keyboard by being a copy cat to iphone's touch screen. the thumb keyboard and the touch screen are two extremely different consumer experience of the products. they are worlds apart.


the history of marketing has been brutal to copycat brands. being unique is one of marketing's most revered commandments. it is one of the top holy grail of marketing while being a copycat is poison, a sure path to failure.


that reminds me of burger king when it first launched in the philippines. burger king in the philippines essentially had the same sort of offerings as in the US, one of which was the bottomless refill of sodas (coca cola products). it was a first in the philippines for any fast food restaurant and was a hit among consumers.


a top official from burger king headquarters in the US visited manila to look at the operations here. one of the big discussions with the marketing team of burger manila was the bottomless refill of sodas. the BK official had asked that the offering be stopped, obviously to improve margins. the local marketing people objected arguing that it being a first in the country, it was a top draw among consumers. BK was head to head with the leaders jollibee and mcdonald's and any advantage it can have was one of the things the local marketing team was defending.


the BK official stood pat on the direction and i agree with it. he said BK is all about its charbroiled hamburgers, not sodas. it is their key brand equity.


cellphones are very much the physical design as its features and software. cellphone brands have their own unique physical designs that not only do we remember them, we buy them for that reason. that is true with Motorola's slim flip phones which became an immediate huge hit as during the time of it's launch most cellphones were thick. and the most recent success of course is the iphone with its touch screen.


the blackberry was weathered all these new physical design innovations from their competitors. the blackberry continued to have very good market share and a large and even growing number of loyal users. and all that because blackberry's thumb keyboard was able to fight off these competitive design onslaught.


until now, when they removed the thumb keyboard in the blackberry storm.


it would be interesting to see if consumers agree and confirm this marketing law of "though shall not remove thy brand equity".

Couples For Christ anti-RH 5043 bill ad : half truths turn into full failure

this is a half page print ad that appeared on page 2 of the philippine daily inquirer. this RH Bill 5043 is a hotly contested one in congress with the catholic church on one side and progressive lawmakers on the other.


we do not think a plain black & white ad, empty of any visual is enough to attract anyone, much less convince anyone to CFC's position in the RH Bill issue. doing a press release would have been more effective if this was all that they can do as a print ad.

there is an attempt to some creative writing through the use of the idea "kill the bill before the bill kills the filipino family" which is quite good per se, but used in this ad, it became the weakness of the ad.

this ad stepped into the arena of "scare tactics" and "extreme exaggeration". "scare tactics" seem to be the over-all strategy employed by oppositionists to this RH bill. this strategy is applied across all forms of media, press releases, speeches in congress and even in the pulpit. almost forgot to mention that the whole thing is being led by the catholic church.

we will leave the point of the catholic church for the moment and will focus on the CFC, since it is them who released the print ad.

the "kill the bill if you don't want to kill the filipino family" approach does not work as it lacks specifics. the word "kill" and as used in the ad makes it very powerful but consistent with the "scare tactics" approach, it purposely left out a strong reason why or an explanation as to how passage of the bill will kill the family.

we can't even say the absence of the reason why is to leave things to the imagination of the audience. in the first place, ads to be effective do not leave anything to the imagination of the intended target audience. equally important, it's really impossible for the mind to figure out how passage of the bill will kill the filipino family. it's too much of a stretch and these two ideas, even if one uses wild imagination, do not belong to the same page.

i am reminded of the friars of the spanish colonial rule when they first came to the country some centuries ago, their favorite tactic in converting indigenous filipinos was to employ scare tactics, something like - "not converting to catholicism will bring upon you eternal fire and oozing lava to burn you in hell" kind of lines.

the spanish colonial friars may have had some success during that time -- it was the first time that the filipinos met westerners. some of them knew about islam, but most of them were worshipping their ancestors or animals and nature. most of them, specially at the beginning were unable to read, write or speak spanish. in other words, the scare tactics of the spanish friars mostly worked because the filipinos were mostly naive and clueless in many levels, in many ways of the spanish friars.

that, however, is not the case of the intended target audience of the print ad. this ad appeared in the philippine daily inquirer whose readers belong mostly to the AB and C socio-eco class. they are certainly not as naive and clueless as the filipinos were when the spanish friars arrived in the philippines. scare tactics will not work. not only will scare tactics of this sort not work, they will most likely have a negative impact on the target audience.

the target audience will see through this ad. they will probably feel insulted that such scare tactics are being used at them. the ad shows CFC have no respect on the intelligence of the intended target market. insulting the intelligence of the AB and upper C is probably the biggest mistake anyone can make when it comes to this particular target audience.

we have not touched on the part of the title of this post - half truths.

studying and reading the contents of Bill RH 5043 will clearly tell you that opposite to what this ad saying, it is actually for the filipino family. a significantly high percentage of filipino families belong to the poor with meager resources even for day to day survival of the family. this bill seeks to empower the family, women specially to have full control of their bodies when it comes to reproductive health. empowering family members, specially the women is being supportive of the filipino family.

couples for christ employing scare tactics done by the spanish colonial friars popularized centuries ago on naive and clueless pinoy natives and clearly employing half truths in this ad? that's clearly a WAWAM!

oh, and we forgot to mention that this group, couples for christ is a catholic organization which supposedly also follow the ten commandments.

cebuana lhuillier pawnshop's sarah geronimo print ad - the mystery of the unsaid

pawnshops is one of the most frequent target of ad agencies who want to win advertising awards. these ad agencies would convince pawnshops to allow them to create ads for them for the sole purpose of having a wham bang creative ad to get the ad agency to win advertising awards.

that's what i thought what this print ad was. but, i changed my mind about that after reading the ad.

double click the image for a larger view

first, it uses sarah geronimo, one of the country's top recording artists, a tv celebrity and now breaking into the movies. the client must have paid several millions of pesos to get sarah and her mom to appear in this print ad and that does not make it a one shot deal which is normally the case for ads just meant to showcase an ad agency's creativity to win awards.


and then, i read the copy and look at the whole concept. it's a true blue endorser advertising campaign ad, so this is not the one shot deal that ad agencies do with small clients to get ad awards under their belt.


what is a pawnshop? what do filipino consumers use it for?


to filipino consumers, a pawnshop is a place of last resort - when we run out of cash and there is no one else to go to. the pawnshop is the place to go out of desperation. accessibility, high value assessment and low interest rates are the most important considerations in choosing a pawnshop. i would say accessibility is probably the most important consideration. you don't want to spend money for transport fare to go to your pawnshop. to begin with the reason you need a pawnship is because you don't have money.

and that is what confuses me with this cebuana lhuillier print ad. the ad positions the brand as a positive enabler of dreams when a pawnshop is really a savior of last resort, it's where we go when we want quick loans. the headline, "Pangarap ay abot-kamay" (dreams are close at hand) and the body copy talks as if it's like an education where we know having one enables us to have a brighter future. it's also not an educational plan where the parents save up today for the future - it's all positive and forward looking. pawnshops have a negative aura to it, it's a last resort place. it's a lifeline to get us out of a hole we are stuck in, not a ladder we place on a wall to climb towards a positive goal.

the other weakness of this print ad is it's not a stand alone ad. there is a gap in the logic flow in the ad. there is a disconnect on the role of the mom of sarah. it is not explained in this print ad what was it that cebuana lhuiller is praising her for in connection to helping sarah achieve her dreams. there is a tv version of this ad campaign and this print ad assumes the print ad reader has seen the tv ad. the tv ad has the complete story but this one does not.

an ad version should be a stand alone ad - with the complete thought and sale in it. the assumption should always be this is the only medium by which the target will see this ad campaign. having an ad in print that is imcomplete in thought is a WAWAM!

next on WAWAM! is the tv spot.

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!

tide detergent's mr. palengke tv commercial - part 2

senator mar roxas in this tide detergent commercial did not mention the tide brand name even once. he also did not touch the product and and in fact his only interaction with tide was when he pointed to the price discount on the pack.

is it a tide detergent tv commercial? hell, yeah! is it a product endorsement tv ad by the nationally elected senator? hell, yeah!

there is no mistaking - mr. palengke appeared in the tide commercial and is endorsing the product. why else would you display such huge bags of tide, standing up with the tide logo clearly seen? i don't think you will ever see any store in the palengke where they display tide that way and certainly not in front of the store where it contains nothing but giant tide packs. the way tide was displayed and the shelf itself is simply not done in the palengkes.



this is not tide's brandsell advertising. in the world of p&g advertising, this is considered as a tactical value advertising. it's meant to sell tide's large packs and promote big purchases among consumers in the palengke.

what? wait a minute. mr. palengke in a palengke promoting big pack purchases? something is very wrong about that!

first of all, detergent purchase habits says most consumers buy small packs for lower cash outlay. also, the palengke is where most DE and some lower C socio-eco users go to for their daily needs, and most of them go to the palengkes very often because they do no have the money to buy in bulk, thus the consumer practice is small price but more frequent purchases.

and the above is where we move in to a new topic - this is not just a product endorsement ad, it is actually a political campaign ad.

promoting large priced purchases for bulk detergent products is simply alien to the palengke goers. it's consumers who go to supermarkets who do that, but hardly is that legitimate purchasing habit for those who shop in palengkes. very few palengke goers can afford large pack purchases, in fact it is in the palengke where you can buy literally a spoonful of anything, placed in small plastic bags. you can actually buy condiments and cooking needs in small plastic bags good for one cooking. for an advertising purist, you can argue this commercial is off strategy.

the fact that the mr. palengke, senator mar roxas commercial is situated in a palengke means only one thing - it's a political ad.

but p&g is not foolish. they will not intentionally and knowingly air an off strategy commercial. being off strategy in p&g is a mortal sin that will get you fired the next minute you say it. i am certain they have done extensive consumer research on this tv commercial - from the choice of the talent to a full blown advertising pre-airing test and i bet they found that while this commercial is meant to be tactical, it has powerful brandsell characteristics.

is it a WAWAM!? it's not entirely a WAWAM! for tide detergent. mr. palengke has excellent credentials and a huge following. it's also not a WAWAM! for senator mr. roxas. he is getting national tv exposure highly consistent with his positioning as the mr. palengke. and for free! the media money behind it is being paid for by p&g.

again, is it a WAWAM!?

yes, it's a WAWAM! for the filipino people and it's soul. we can rationalize it all we want. we can take it down to technicalities like no brand name was said, but the fact remains, like judas, several pieces of silver worth millions of pesos in talent fee was exchanged for integrity, pride, honesty and honor in a nationally elected public office.

coke angel tv ad - back to basics

coke's previous ad campaign was difficult to understand. they had these strange drawings showing "buhay" stuff spewing up from an open coke bottle. figuring out what the graphics meant or what part of my "buhay" they represent is very difficult for ordinary mortals to understand. it was just a feel good ad campaign - the creatives feeling good for themselves for having a canvass to show how creative they are but i don't think it made consumers felt good about coca cola.

i am not sure what caused it, it was either the right strategy with a wrong execution or a bad strategy that was executed well. if the asi taulava and their christmas tv spots are an indication, i would say the problem was a bad strategy that was executed well. it's a strategy problem - either it was incorrectly written or it's meaning incorrectly interpreted.

on a strategy standpoint, coke's angel tv spot, "ang sarap dito" is a vast improvement from their previous campaign. with the current tagline "buhay coke tikman mo", the angel tv spot repositions coke to be what it really is - a softdrink meant to refresh and quench thirst. the previous tagline made coke pretend to be just a feel good product that may or may not have something to do with refreshment or thirst quenching. this one returns coke to being a liquid drink to fix thirst, back to basics as admen like to say.

this is like a back to basics ad for coke. the whole commercial is actually on a taste and thirst quenching strategy. in this ad, it's clear that people drink coke for it's taste and thirst quenching benefits. what a relief, finally, some focus for coke ads.

the ad works because of it's excellent production values. it's a very polished tv ad and we have not seen one aired in the philippines with this kind of high caliber production values for many years. i had obsessed with the crude and inconsistent post prod work and design of the wings of the angel, but i don't think ordinary consumers notice those things, nor will they care. anyone sitting in front of their tv will stop and notice this coke ad because of the excellent over-all production of the commercial.

aside from the over-all production values, what makes this coke ad stand out from the noise is the jingle. the melody is very memorable and more importantly, the interpretation and treatment of the song to make it sound like a singing angel was brilliant work. also, the choice of the talent for the angel role was very well done. she is an unknown to the philippine audience and that added to the mystery and interest for the ad.

(read more here:

http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/2008/04/wings-coca-cola-tv-spot.html

http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/2008/04/production-values-coca-cola-ang-sarap.html )

i am sure a lot of discussions have been made on this between the client and the ad agency at storyboard stage, but i didn't think adding the devil in the story at the end was needed. i fail to see it's value but i see the bad ingredients it added to the mix. i don't think it helped in the delivery of the message but what it did was make the story in the commercial unnecessarily complicated.

the point of the ad is to communicate that coke is so delicious and refreshing that even angels will want to taste it to the point of transforming to become a human. the angel deciding to become a human because of coke is the point of interest in this ad. adding the devil at the end just puts a strain to the ad.

what does adding the idea of even the devil likes its taste got to do with the story? it does not contribute to communicating the coke strategy in a better way. adding the devil brings in an unnecessary component of good vs evil. it does not also help that the treatment seem to leave an impression of some kind of attraction or a possibility of the devil seducing the angel. these are just too strenuous to the story.