Hootie in Hell
I have wrestled a bit about posting this. It's a TV commercial for Burger King, who have been working for a while in "viral marketing," i.e., people passing their ads around because they are "cool" or "interesting." I despise viral marketing, because it inserts commerce where it doesn't belong, like personal conversations... I hate it.
At the same time- GAH! I love this commercial, which I doubt has aired on TV anywhere. This guy has the ad embedded on his website, and while I disagree with some of his analyses of the clip (I'm sorry, the cowboys with the fries sprouting in the background are a homoerotic image if I ever saw one), I appreciate his enthusiasm. Whoever thought of getting Hootie and the Blowfish to sing a bastardized version of the hobo song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" while escapees from Pee-Wee Herman's universe frolic with large bits of food is just brilliant.
posted by Lee H. @ Saturday, April 09, 2005
7 Comments:
Actually, that's aired a whole bunch -- or at least one like it; I did check the whole ad, but the bits of it I saw looked exactly like the one I've seen a bunch. So, yeah, it's actually on TV, and every so often an ad gets things right; it's rare, but...
"the breasts, they go on trees" that may be a sentence unique in human history.
Now I wish I could un-hear it... :)
I'm surprised this exists. It's obviously produced professionally. I wonder, how did BK get it hosted at an EDU??
Back when I was in New York working at the advertising agencies this was a huge thing, trying to get something to "go viral." Huge. If we could somehow insert the word into a pitch, the client would go crazy and pay twice what they'd have paid before. We'd seen things go viral before, and the client would absolutely salivate at the prospect of getting that kind of attention.
Although I worked on many projects which promised or were supposed to go viral, none did. The client lacked balls, plain and simple. When it came right down to it, the client was afraid to take the risks that would make it work. For something to go viral, it has to have the right cocktail of all the things that make it happen. It has to be to be a shocking, even brutal parody or put down the product (like the recent-but-unauthorized Volkswagen Polo ad, or this one with its silly, celebrity song and silly, homoerotic images).. We would table several ideas that sounded like they were from a collaboration between Monty Python and Benny Hill, and each time, the client would backpedal.
And Hootie? Hootie has always sucked, but at least now we know what.
Uh oh.. confession time! :D
I liked H&TBF's first album the moment it came out, as long as I didn't think about it too much. (It was only later that I found I had the hots for Darius Rucker, the singer... but that's another story. ;) )
H&TBF kind of fell into the the deadly "Dave Matthews" trap... they were cool people who made decent music, but they played it too safe... they were talented people playing bland songs, and I'm sorry, that's just not right. I've heard both Darius Rucker and Dave Matthews interviewed, and they are smart, funny, very COOL guys... so why do they make such weak middle-of-the-road music? I wish I knew. I'd say it was for the money, because the Dave Matthews Band are for some reason STILL popular, but Hootie etc. are not exactly bringing 'em in... hence the fact that they are doing fast-food commercials.
Was it a lack of "vision" (however bland, given the fact that TDMB are actually sucessful) that made Dave Matthews successful in spreading his mediocre crap across the globe, while Rucker and Co. died on the vine?
Also, Arnold told me he's seen this ad on TV... who knew? This is what I get for never watching television.
Though he was pretty sure it didn't include the line about the "ladies with nice caboose" when he saw it.
I dunno; I vaguely remember the "Ladies With Nice Caboose" line, though it could be a manufactured memory type deal.
In that case, you could testify at the Michael Jackson trial.
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