Jun
9
Diamond Idea
Great ideas can come from anywhere, allegedly. Kudos to Ogilvy in Toronto which built a whole campaign to re-launch Shreddies cereal based on an idea from an intern. Hopefully the intern is now earning proper money and not making the tea. This campaign shamelessly lampoons both new product innovation AND qualitative research. It's not often that both strings to my professional bow are so amusingly twanged in one campaign. What I like most about this idea is that it invites us all in on the joke - a brand that is so confident in itself that it can laugh at it's own deficiencies (essentially square, boring and uninspiring). A great story, a lovely simple idea and one that can run and run. Thanks to Martin Bishop for the tip.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
This is genius.
Although I believe there was some fallout that backs up most brand manager’s fears about taking just this kind of a risk - some people didn’t get the joke. Consumers were actually complaining, without any sense of irony, that this was NOT an innovation, but a marketing ploy.
While this heightens the effect of the funny for me, it does show us how carefully one has to place their tounge in their cheek to pull something like this off without alienating some consumers.