Tiny bubbles and marketing baubles

Had the pleasure of paneling on The BeanCast last night with a great group of dudes including marketing powerhouse Joseph Jaffe, AD/blogger pimp-daddy extraordinaire Bill Green, socialmesiter Aaron Strout, and host with the most Bob Knorpp.

Topics ran the gamut, from personalized search to Super Bowl ads.

It was a hell of a time, so if you don't already subscribe to The Bean Cast, get your arse over to iTunes or pick it up directly here.


One of the topics that got me riled up during the show was the hubbub over the spot Method pulled after complaints. Take a look if you haven't seen it already:

Method: Shiny Suds from Kreatif360 on Vimeo.

On the show, I defended the creative and lamented the fact that, once again, a brand has bowed down to a vocal minority's pissing and moaning - a handful of bloggers lambasted the spot for being misogynistic while the more zealous (read: bat-scat insane) ones went as far as to insist that it supports rape. (AdRants' Steve Hall got a taste of how scary Crazy can get.)

Listen, the spot did exactly what it was created to do: cut through clutter while eliciting an emotional response to the idea of scummy chemical residues lurking long after they're first sprayed. Without brand context, I thought it was brilliant. If you aren't making something that scares the hell out of someone, than you aren't doing your job.

The bigger concern here should be, does this kind of advertising mesh with Method's brand? They're innovative, but not necessarily edgy. And certainly not seditious. Jaffe made a good point in the podcast - the spot may have been on brief, but was it on brand? If anything, perhaps the spot shouldn't have been made at all - not for Method anyway. But to take it down after the fact paints the brand as timid. There's no room for timid.

Wear a cup.

Other moments in Cry Baby History: Bunched knickers over Snickers.