Stupid commercials that worked on me

There are two commercials that are both really stupid, and really effective. The first is the old school Mentos commercials that I’m such a huge fan of. I think they’re so funny, so stupid, and I’d almost look forward to seeing them on TV just to have a guaranteed laugh. The second example is a commercial for Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. I hate this commercial. It’s stupid, grotesque, and it makes me vomit. The weird thing is though, I almost always have both a pack of Mentos and a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce in my house. I wonder why that is.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

The commercials are both pretty funny, to me at least, and have something in common: they’re both really, really, really stupid. Now the thing is, there’s no science to judging whether the commercial’s good or not, and I don’t have any performance-based metrics off the top of my head, but if it worked on me, then at the very least, it worked on one person.

The Freshmaker

Mentos ran a good series of these ads a while ago, which are drastically different from the ads they’ve ran in recent years. When I saw these ads, I wasn’t at a stage in my life where I had that much disposable income, so it never caused a direct purchase for me. In fact, it wasn’t until years after they ran that campaign where I actually saw Mentos distributed in the supermarkets that I shopped at. I remember buying one for the first time, instantly thinking about the commercial when I saw the logo. I didn’t expect that the bad part of my day would be instantly resolved by popping a mentos in my mouth, but I was quite surprised that such a stupid commercial worked on me. It was different, so it really got my attention, and for it to have had such a long lasting experience on me, it obviously did both a great job of creating brand preference and brand loyalty within me. These guys nailed it.

A Thrill a Bite

I think the true beauty of the Frank’s Red Hot Sauce one is that I’m not even a hot sauce fan. In fact, I really don’t like hot sauce on about 95% of the things that I eat. But off the top of my head, I can’t actually think of any other hot sauce brands, and if anyone was to ever ask me what’s a good hot sauce, I would for whatever reason recommend Frank’s Red Hot. It might be because of the fact that hot sauce in particular is a relatively low-advertised category, but I have to give credit where credit’s due – This grabbed my attention, it made me aware of the brand, and it actually, for whatever reason, created a bit of brand loyalty within me to their product. If that’s not a win, I don’t know what is, and that’s probably why they’re still using this campaign.

Stupid Isn’t Always as Stupid Does

Where am I going with this? I’m not referring to either of these campaigns as dumb, in fact, I’m stating why these are actually really well-run campaigns in my opinion. Also, I don’t mean that these campaigns are stupid in a negative sense. I think they’re stupid in a funny sense, which creates a point of differentiation in these respective brands’ advertising. Neither brand decided to go after taste, or value, or any other rational claim. They both foused heavily on emotional selling propositions, and have a result done a much better job at developing the brand personality, and creating brand loyalty in way that’s more effective than many of their other competitors. Executing something that effective isn’t stupid at all – it’s brilliant.

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