Ah! You’ve returned to enjoy another in my series of critiques of award-winning radio commercials — those honored as “the best of the best” by the 2007 Radio Mercury Awards.
A few are Good. Many are…Not Good. Not Good To An Embarrassing Degree.
Like this $5,000 prize winner.
This is bad in some many different places, but let’s start with the only one that’s important:
It doesn’t work.
Why not?
Because they’re not painting a picture of the results.
It’s a wine sale. From the point of view of the advertiser, what is the desired result of wine sale?
Just a hunch: selling lots of wine.
HERE COMES THE CLUE TRAIN
The picture you paint is what the listener will remember. So that picture should represent the results of the product or service being advertised.
The people who created this made a mistake that is painfully common to bad commercial copywriting: They seized upon a single word — “passionate” — and took it literally.
Apparently the idea is the people at the store are passionate about wine, and during the sale they’ll share their passion with you.
No, they won’t. During the sale, they’ll sell you wine…cheaper.
These guys think they’re being clever. They are mistaken.
“That is so hot.”
“Actually, I’m kind of chilly.”
That’s supposed to be witty?
Did you laugh when, bizarrely, she didn’t understand what he meant by “hot”?
Or did you think, “Jeez, she’s an even bigger idiot than he is”?
Do you believe — even in that nether world where we temporarily suspend disbelief — that those two people are married or living together?
They’re just two disconnected characters reading stupid dialogue, with no relationship at all between them.
And the capper? Just when you assume it can’t get any worse, this award-winning spot segues from really dumb dialogue to typically stupid advertiser-speak:
“Everyone knows” the advertiser has “great wine, great selection, and an unrivaled staff.”
Uh-huh. Sure. That’s what everyone says about this wine merchant. Especially that bit about their “unrivaled staff.”
When it comes to believable dialogue, David Mamet’s got nothing on these guys.
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Ok…so the place is called Cervix, and apparently if you purchase things there you’ll turn really sexy and need to have sex.
What IS the staff un-rivaled at? Are they great at Dungeons and Dragons? Tug Of War? Jousting?
The production value wasn’t horrible…you did kinda get the feel of eavesdropping on a phone call but you hit it on the head with the oversell of the passion…between Mr. Hornball at the beginning, to the VO talent that sounded like phone sex, I’m not sure if, while I’m driving my car and hear it playing I know it’s a wine sale or a pitch for a local sex toy shop….
The only logic I can apply to this commercial is that the entire creative staff must have been oversampling the merchandise before they started writing the script and kept sampling through the recording session.
All that sampling leads me to feel like I’m having a hangover when I hear the commercial.
Another problem I have with this spot and others of its ilk is that the voice EQed to sound like it’s “calling” (vs. the more clearly heard female) is the one that gives the pitch on prices, which obscures the details of the specials they’re advertising. What you’re more likely to hear clearly is her un-EQed voice saying, “I’ll have the casserole ready.” There is nothing about her end of the conversation that demands she be the un-EQed (aka less clearly heard) speaker. This indicates the producers of the spot didn’t put enough thought into who needed to be heard more clearly and why. Further, she hangs up, a dial tone is heard, yet his EQed voice is still heard to say, “She wants me.” How is that possible for us to “hear” if the call is over? It reminds me of a national PSA for polyps (yes, polyps) wherein a polyp “calls” a personal advice show (for being unpopular and turning people away in disgust – imagine!). The “host” gets flustered and hangs up, a dial tone is heard, and the EQed “polyp” on the other end is heard saying “hello? hello?” This impossible technical idiosyncrasy bothered me more than the concept of a talking polyp being able to use the phone in the first place.