The opening line of a radio commercial is the commercial for the commercial.
Unfortunately, that’s a concept the people who create Albertsons’ radio advertising don’t understand…
Ostensibly, this radio ad is aimed at shoppers who would appreciate more thorough nutritional labeling on grocery products.
But you wouldn’t know that from the opening line:
“With over 40,000 food items at Albertsons” — That’s it, game over. They’ve declared that this spot is about how many food items there are at Albertsons.
They just couldn’t resist boasting about how many products they stock — even though the number of items they stock is irrelevant to the “enhanced nutritional labeling” message.
Fact: The average customer doesn’t evaluate 40,000 food items during a typical trip to the supermarket.
Fact: The “40,000” figure is meaningless without being placed in a context that enables the listener to conceptualize it.
Fact: The misplaced bragging has no value even as a boast, because if you’re not in the supermarket business you have no idea if 40,000 food items is more, less or about the same as the number of food items carried by most large supermarkets. To the consumer, that number is meaningless.
And the “40,000” figure truly is meaningless to this commercial’s supposed message because that is not the number of food items that Albertsons includes in its “Nutrition IQ” program. That number is much smaller than 40,000.
Halfway into the commercial they say, “It’s like shopping with your own personal nutritionist.” Oh! You mean this radio ad is not about Albertsons’ 40,000 items? Too bad the targeted listeners already have stopped listening.
Oh, and thanks for telling us that fresh fruits and vegetables have lots of vitamins and minerals. Golly, we had no idea! We thought fresh fruits and vegetables are bad for our health.
And then there’s that God-awul, inane music bed. Did adding that music to the announcer’s voice increase the effectiveness of the sales message in any way?
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does anyone really listen through 60 second commercials anymore? the actual information could have easily been 30 seconds, or really 15’s with just the ‘specials’.
Nice job of smacking down stupidity in copywriting.
Stupidity in copyrighting that makes money?
Makes me wonder what the agencies are pitching to the client for this stuff. Is material like this spot no focus group worthy? Or is radio thrown together as secondary to say TV or print.
On first listen, it’s an OK spot. It doesn’t have to have a commerical in the first sentence apparently. I myself expect that more in a price point spot anyway. The fact that it’s unremarkable says more then anything else I guess. The music bed sort of works for the spot, but doesn’t wear well, and in the off air is almost too loud.
Write it down as unremarkable creative, but on the outside looking in, we really need more info as to what direction the client and agency was going with this to really give a proper judgement. Maybe bland is good in high rotation?