Must follow through

This spot makes a number of mistakes, but I'll just focus on failure to follow through.



Some people may find this funny, but I'm sure I don't know any of them. The humor is simply too gratuitous to pay off. But that's not really the point, since the humor has nothing to do with anything here.

There are far more interesting ads to talk about, but I chose to blog about this because the product appears to face a common problem. That is, figuring out what (if anything) makes it unique and what insight could possibly fuel inspiring creative.

I do believe there are cases where neither will be true. In other words, product will be a copy cat and there really won't be any compelling "new" insight to unlock some hidden door. None of this excuses the need for a strategy.

In this case, we have a fruit flavored energy drink (at least that's what it is since the spot doesn't offer much in the way of a description). And, what do fruit flavored energy drinks do? They rev you up, get you going, and set you on your way. Fine.

There are any number of reasons people need energy. Amp decided to focus on mornings at the office. That's fine too.

Presumably the nerdy protagonist is in need of a little spark to get his mundane day off to a speedy start, so he chugs one of these Amp energy drinks and....

Well, then he turns an old PC into an ice-cream serving robot and we spend the rest of the spot watching his co-workers dive head first into an ice cream feeding frenzy (that is ice cream, right?) There's oogles of obvious sexual innuendo, but certainly nothing gratifying, in fact pretty distasteful.

But most importantly, tell me again why we're watching this ice cream orgy in the first place, not to mention why it deserves more focus than the alleged product benefit? We don't even see the product for a second time until the very end of the :60 spot. We're offered no product description and the link between getting hyped up from this drink and building the robot is virtually imperceptible.

Let's assume the creators of this ad started with a nugget of a boring insight - work takes energy to get big, overwhelming, otherwise complicated tasks accomplished - well, then you've simply got to carry this through or the viewer will miss it entirely. No where do we see any of this toiling made oh so much easier thanks to the fire power of Amp.

This will end up on You Tube getting mashed up every which way by high school boys who will enjoy the part that has nothing to do Amp, but it certainly won't move the product.

I think this spot is just plain awful, but I'll just call it OFF STRATEGY and move on.