By Rick Stanton
My poor wife. I don’t know how many times a day, week or month goes by that she hears, “How did that get past the creative director?”
At my 40th birthday party, a client in attendance gave me one of the best presents ever. It was a giant rubber stamp with one simple message: “BULLSHIT.” And boy did it come in handy at times.
When young writers and art directors would come into my office and present the next great, award-winning ad or campaign, I would listen to their rationale, their pitch if you will, and ask them two questions; Is this smart? Is it on brand?
And if it wasn’t, I would take the scripts, storyboards or whatever else was used to sway me, ink up the “Bullshit” stamp and remind them— “Don’t come into my office with work that is off strategy, off brand and conceived to win awards instead of market share.”
I considered those as teaching moments, going back to my roots in public education. So, with this understanding, I bring you two really dubious efforts running on TV now.
The first is the latest State Farm campaign featuring Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Up until now, the work featuring Rodgers has been pretty solid.
The current work features a truly unlikeable character who’s supposed to be Rodgers’ sports agent. The agent is threatened by Rodgers’ State Farm insurance agent and, in an attempt to defend his turf, quickly establishes that he’s a jerk.
What one comes away with is the lasting image of this moron’s boorish behavior, leaving you wondering why a seemingly class athlete like Rodgers would ever hire such a clueless buffoon in the first place. And, how State Farm could have allowed such a schmuck to be part of its message.
This idea surely would have resulted in “The Stamp” being applied to a forehead or two—much less a story board—back in the day.
The other current holiday ad that gets “The Stamp” comes from your friends at Ford. It features a mother and daughter driving out to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree, together eschewing the urban-tree lot. Touching, unless of course you think it through a little further.
Cutting down yet another living tree in the woods, and passing tree lots along the way, means one less tree. I hate to be Grinch-like, but maybe we should stop cutting down trees in this era of climate- change challenges.
Maybe we should find different ways to decorate for the holidays or buy a lovely fake tree that won’t die in four weeks—or burn your house down. Maybe the mom and daughter should have driven into the hills to plant a tree.
I get the surface of the story in that spot, but a great story isn’t a cliché and it goes deeper than the surface, thus giving it sticking power. Shame on the creative director for not pushing for better thinking. Whap! He/she get stamped, and so does Ford for settling for this low-hanging, tired unthinking.
To end on a positive note, every year I welcome the return of the incredibly smart and enduring Corona “Christmas Palm” ad, proof that the best ideas are usually the simplest ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbJV9jQmenc
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/d0AJ/ford-built-for-the-holidays-sales-event-setting-an-example-t1
