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!

claudine, jodie and carmina tv30s - lactum tv spot the schizoid and repressed tv ad. part 1

this tv spot is some kind of a repressed tv ad where it seems it thinks it's a superior product that seem to want to position itself on a superiority claim but it doesn't, either intentionally or unintentionally. this indecision has resulted to an ad where it seems to shoot itself in the foot in more ways than one.

this indecision is also shown in using not only one, but three celebrity endorsers - claudine, jodie and carmina and yet they are not prominently featured in the ad where they appear only at the end, the last 2 to 3 seconds. it's not just the matter of not being able to make the most of the multi-million peso talent fees they had to pay the three endorsers, but more than that why have celebrity endorsers in the ad when they are not used properly? endorsers are chosen supposedly for their pulling power and the power to persuade but with the very limited time they are used in the ad and worse, the story in the ad don't even relate to their lives as celebrities, why use them at all? do they believe in the power of the endorsers they chose or not?

let's be honest here - will it really make a big difference, a loss in sale power if they removed the few seconds that the 3 endorsers appeared in the commercial in the last 2 to 3 seconds of the ad? will the audience miss anything in substance or sale?

99% of the ad feature ordinary upscale moms who make an effort to do their best for their kids - giving their kids not only the most but also giving extras on top of the most. these are moms who wake up early, who know that being a mom is difficult, cook the food and make sure their kids eat properly by serving them even fruits. and these moms choose lactum for that same reason because not only does lactum give their kids all the essential nutrients in the food chain, it has extras helping kids get 100% nourished. the visuals in the ad seem to be straightforward except that part where we see a mom putting a rubber ducky in a child's bath tub (very upscale! a bathroom with a bathtub!). i don't get what that meant or how that relates to moms wanting to give their kids the most plus more. was the ad saying i don't just give my kids a bath, but also playtime during bath time? why is that relevant? and why is that good?

the scenes they chose to depict the character of the moms as being very particular about choosing "the best and plus" are weak. they are not eloquent in communicating the characters of the mom. the power of the ad rests on the kind of moms that choose lactum but they have failed to make a compelling story to depict the characters of the moms they want to portray.

part of the problem could be length of time available to do so. it escapes me why they had to show three moms (i actually know the reason why, but more on that later) in the ad. having three moms prevented them to tell a more compelling and complete story on the moms. while time is obviously a factor, the biggest reason why this failed is the kind of copywriting they put into the ad. it appears to me that is the toughest challenge for the writers. the product freight is stock lactum - we have seen that in other lactum ads before. but the choices 0f waking up early, setting a toy in the bath and cooking food and serving meals with fruits are hohum depictions of what they want to convey. i don't think there's really enough time to allow the ideas to gel and properly communicated. all that they had was a sentence or two to be able to personify the lactum mom.

the only reason why i think they chose to have three moms in the ad is that they have 3 celebrity endorsers! hahahaha! (yup, that' real funny as it's really a very contrived reason.) it's probably a lame attempt to communicate 3 moms, 3 stories and 3 endorsers. but are we to believe that each of the three celebrity endorsers are represented in those three very lame scenes?

i get the feeling that choosing the right depictions of the lactum mom were the biggest battle the creative team had on this storyboard and ev eventually with the client. i bet they spent so much time with multiple revisions to get those 3 right. but in the end, they really were just bad writing. i get the feeling that a copywriter who just graduated from college 3 months ago wrote those scenes. or as they were revising the storyboard a hundredth time, the ad agency gave up in desperation and just agreed to whatever the client wanted to put in the ad.

this is a pity as giving flesh to the lactum mom is the foundation and core idea of this ad. it's probably the consumer insight that they extracted from some research but it's delivery is all lost on bad copywriting and too little time to do anything meaningful with it.

to be continued......