Here's a new spot for Starburst courtesy of TBWA/Chiat. I assume this sort of thing would be mildly amusing to the generically defined "male age 12-24", but that's about where it ends.
Check out the spot, then continue reading.
Personal reaction aside, I have no issue with the tone or manner. Afterall, it's an ad for candy - it probably should be silly. The execution even does a good job connecting to (what appears) the strategy, in a way its target audience will understand without having to think too hard.
The problem here is the strategy, itself. The tagline, "A juicy contradiction" is clearly pushing off some insight. The question is where this insight came from and I'd venture to guess it was in the client brief.
Imagine yourself sitting behind a two way mirror in the back room of a focus group in....oh, let's say Irvine or Atlanta or Chicago or Minneapolis or anywhere else for that matter. In the room, gathered around a table, sit 9 high school kids. They're clad in some combination of hoodies, denim skirts and baseball caps. It's a mix of boys and girls, with more boys than girls. After persistent requests from the moderator, their iPods have been tucked in bags or back pockets. Some are chewing gum. Some are checking out the opposite sex across the table. It's taking everything they've got to resist texting / checking email / playing with their app's, etc.
Cut to the moderator: "OK, so today we're going to talk about Starburst. Real quick, first reaction, tell me, what comes to your mind when you grab a Starburst, unwrap it and pop it in your mouth? Jack, let's start with you.."
Cut to Jack. Blond hair, freckles, DC t-, distressed jeans, black one stars. "A juicy contradiction. You know, contradiction - like a statement in spite of itself."
Right.
That never happened. Clearly, this is a marketer's insight. A brand push strategy. It's a smart brand manager - let's call him Jeff. Jeff is charged with growing share for Starburst. He knows his competition. He has $x for marketing investment. He's crunched his numbers and submitted his forecasts. In order to make bonus, get promoted and get any more funding for his brand he has to make goal. He is determined to make Starburst the most top of mind candy. He knows he needs to make Starburst stand for something different than anything else out there, so when Jack walks down the candy isle and gives 1/8 of a second thought to which candy he wants to pull of the shelf, he knows he wants Starburst and he knows why.
So Jeff sits and thinks and thinks some more. It's dense. It's chewy. It looks like rubber. It only dissolves with saliva. It's artificially sweetened to taste like fruit. It's bright colored. It's ingredients have nothing to do with fruit, but when it mixes with saliva it almost tastes like fruit juice. And while it's thrashing around in your mouth, getting stuck to your teeth, slowly making it's way into your digestive system, "juicy" might be a good description. But juicy isn't enough. Skittles are juicy. Tic tacs are juicy. And juicy sounds the opposite of dense or chewy. Alas, there it is - the contradiction! "A juicy contradiction".
Jack would probably say something like "it's like gum, but I can swallow it, so I chew it while it has flavor, then I don't have to bother with it any more" But that's much less interesting. Unless, of course, you find others in the room feel the same. And perhaps there's something to this gum you can swallow thing - like a final bit of satisfaction.
Enough hypothesizing, the point is this: if the insight comes from marketers instead of consumers, it's unlikely to resonate with the very people for which it was intended in the first place. The best insights are the dumb obvious ones - obvious to the people who use the products and can't live without them. Almost on the tip of their tounge when they start talking about it, especially in a room full of other people who also love the products.
As marketers, you are inclined to overthink it. Stop thinking about it at all. Head to Irvine, fill a room with the people who buy your products, shut up and listen.
In the meantime, I'm calling this STRATEGY OFF STRATEGY. No contradiction there.
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