They Prefer Syrup

It not like us here at Drink Moxie to talk about things just because everyone else is talking about them. With that in mind, let's talk about the thing that everyone's talking about.



Yes it's a commercial (part of a larger campaign, actually, courtesy of the Corn Refiners Association and DDB-Chicago) for the sugar that erudite America loves to hate, high fructose corn syrup. And yes, it has raised a few OMGs and perhaps a WTF or two in the interspheres. What I'm interested in is not why they would put out such a campaign, but why people would be so alarmed about it.

How different is this from what we're used to seeing? Certainly we all know "Got Milk" and "Pork: The Other White Meat" (both thanks to Bozell Worldwide), among the more notable food commodity campaigns. From a public image perspective, you could say that these two things had something going for them that the newer campaign doesn't - they are recognized as actual foods. High fructose corn syrup, to most people, is an ingredient. It doesn't come from a farm, it comes from a process involving enzymes and other chemicals (milk and pork are also processed, of course, but aren't thought of as such). This seems to be part of the point of the "SweetSurprise" campaign, with imagery that puts the "C" back in "HFCS" (see www.sweetsurprise.com, if you dare). This begs the question, though, how stellar is the image of corn at this point, that any product would want to be more closely associated with it?

The crux of this campaign is the health issue, but this is not necessarily unique, either. The "Other White Meat" campaign came in response to a growing public apprehension about the health impacts of red meat (we should note, however, that beef is still what's for dinner) and a few latent concerns about trichinosis. But the Pork Board had a more subtle approach, while the Corn Refiners are more aggressively combating the health concerns. In doing so, they've thrown a spotlight right on those concerns, which might be a bit risky. When Joe Public hears "fine in moderation" or reads on a website, "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted high fructose corn syrup 'Generally Recognized as Safe' status for use in food, and reaffirmed that ruling in 1996 after thorough review," it might be taken as less than reassuring.

Following my typical practice of comparing everything to Mad Men (I promise not to do this every time), this could be looked at through the lens of the pilot episode in which Sterling-Cooper is faced with the challenge of promoting Lucky Strike after the nation had awoken to the dangers of smoking. Don Draper's solution, of course, was not to fight the health concerns but to ignore them and focus on the image of the brand - to make smoking look cool, not healthy. Taking a look at this, I'd have to guess that DDB doesn't have a Don Draper:



Maybe the Presidential candidates will learn something from this. Does the strategy of complaining about misinformation and mistreatment by "the media" (or, more nebulously, by "what they say") really resonate with the buying public? Or does it just look like whining? Or even worse, might it backfire, making the Corn Refiners look like they're being a little too defensive, and that maybe there is something to these concerns about HFCS's role in obesity epidemics and diabetes?

If this were a political campaign, you might think that the people this campaign is really for are the people in the corn industry, who can take some pride in seeing these commercials and thinking that not everyone in America is against them. Considering the number of people who are involved, directly or indirectly, in the corn industry, maybe that's enough.

The Agony of Dried Meat

In the season premiere of the very-soon-to-be-multiple-award-winning Mad Men, Don Draper tells Peggy Olson, "You, feeling something. That's what sells."

Which naturally leads us into this new session of Drink Moxie. A session that is all about pain.

We've seen that the themes found in commercials run a range as broad as our culture itself. The rules and limitations about where you can go are constantly in flux. But if there were any basic convention to commercials that you might think would remain universal, it would be that commercials should depict the consumer of a product having a pleasant, enjoyable experience. At the least, the consumer should not suffer extreme pain or serious injury. So we may have thought.

The shift away from products that promise a pleasant experience may have began in the 1990s, when a growing interest in "extreme sports" coincided with the mass-marketing appeal of such caffeine-and-sugar-loaded products as Mountain Dew and the shorter-lived Surge, which failed despite having a more notable ad campaign (hopefully I will get to explore that in a future post). A similar tact was taken for Slim Jims, for reasons I still don't entirely understand (more on that topic later).

However, while these ads associated their products with various outlandish and risk-prone activities, for the most part no one got hurt. (I spent some time looking for a past example where someone did get hurt, but was unsuccessful in finding one -- if you can come up with one, you get an A.)

In 2003, much of America was shocked and amused by the Arnell Group's campaign for Reebok featuring "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker". It was, at the time, a rare example of an ad campaign in which ordinary people get rather brutally beaten. However, in this case the product was really associated with the inflictor rather than the inflictee. To me, it didn't push too many boundaries, as it didn't really show anything too different from what viewers would see on the football telecasts during which these spots would inevitably run. But it was fun no doubt, so I would feel bad if I didn't share (this is the long version of the original spot, distributed online).



The campaign that caught my attention (among others') last year is Carmichael Lynch's "Messin' With Sasquatch" series for JackLinks Beef Jerky, a theretofore unknown product (at least to me) that seemed to be following the trend of branding beef jerky as an "extreme" product along the lines of Slim Jims. But in this case, the consumers of the product, and the "extreme" activities that implicitly result from using the product, have painful consequences.



Ultimately Mountain Dew got into the game as well, with commercials like this one, which uses the theme of product users taking part in risky activities with painful results, and also taps into the power of an accidental resurgence of a pop culture figure as a result of an internet meme -- a winning combination?



So we've seen an interesting step forward in the willingness for "extreme" brands to show users suffering some kind of pain (of course, they have not yet gone so far as to show the difficult recovery processes that would surely follow). But what about other products? What about chewing gum, which, as we have seen, is typically advertised as a gateway to carnal delights? Take a look at this offering from JWT (part of a series of spots, all in a similar vein).



Now we have something interesting. But how far will it go? Is it really possible that a well-established, mainstream financial brand would show a commercial in which the product user is shown having a less-than-pain-free experience? Take a look.



I will grant that this spot (part of McCann Erickson's by now very well established, very mainstream campaign) softens the violence a bit, implying that the product has resulted in these unfortunate accidents but has also mitigated their potential impacts. But there is clearly some pain there. More recently, McCann has been filling the airwaves with a MasterCard spot featuring "Mr. Bill", the disaster-prone clay figurine who was once so subversive that he could only be seen at 1:00am on Saturday nights.

What's bringing about this sudden willingness (perhaps even eagerness, depending on how the trend goes) for brands to show consumers experiencing pain as a result of using their product? Well I'm neither a sociologist nor a philosopher, but if I were, I might point to the culture at large and how the attitudes of the product-buying public may be changing. Could it be that today's American culture has become so divorced from conflict, danger, and hard times in general that the idea of being hurt is actually an appealing alternative to the security and boredom of everyday life? Have the products that our consumer culture has supported for so long made all our lives so easy that the only thing left to do is make those products seem more dangerous?

There certainly is evidence to support the case that our lives are too easy, and it's not too much of a stretch to hypothesize that this has resulted in some innate desire among individuals to make them more risky. But it might be a bigger stretch to think that advertisers would tie the success of their clients' products to this notion. Maybe this is just a new way to grab attention amidst all the media noise (which, if it were the case, would put all of us at Drink Moxie out of business). And as always, we're never entirely sure how the goals of product branders and the attitudes of consumers will change. But I, for one, find it refreshing that advertisers don't feel like they have to coddle us, and know we understand that the world isn't pain-free. I could also have mentioned the Volkswagen commercials by Porter Crispin + Bogusky ... well, I guess I will mention them.



This is perhaps the more enlightened side of the trend, showing users of a product suffering a traumatic incident in a way that is not funny and that has serious consequences. Of course, the real message of the commercial comes at the end, where the passangers walk away unharmed. It did attract attention for being so "real", and sparked some debate over what was appropriate to show in a TV spot. Funny that no one said the same thing about the JackLinks or Stride ads. Maybe they will once Sasquatch does something that the jerky-enthusiasts won't walk away from.

That's all for this time. Your homework is to watch the Emmys tonight. Go Mad Men!