Not only is JWT's Trident chewing gum campaign too awfulf for words, but now people are calling it racist.
Campaign is reporting this morning that the advertising watchdog is to investigate the TV ad for Trident chewing gum after being inundated with complaints that it is racist.
The Advertising Standards Authority is acting after it received 85 more than complaints were received by yesterday afternoon and none of them were from me. Honest
The spot features a Jamaican "comedian" on stage complaining about the blandness of chewing gum.
Who knows why? Its best not to ask these questions. Someone gives him a pack of Cadbury's Trident and then he is off on a personal crusade with the slogan: "Mastication for the nation."
Oh the slogan. Another question, and really it’s the same question, why?
Mike McKenna, the JWT senior creative who helped produce the film, said: "We would never have written anything we thought was going to upset people."
He said the film was inspired by dub poetry exemplified by such performers as the poet Benjamin Zephaniah.
"The actor certainly never thought it had racist overtones," McKenna added.
"I would never have set out to upset anybody. I have good friends who are non-white."
That last quote is a gem.
February 27 - Just how bad is the Cadbury Schweppes Trident TV ad campaign? I hardly know where to start. JWT, your time is really up.
Here's the thing. You're trying to muscle into a market where Wrigley has 95% dominance, what do you do? You don't launch one of the most irritating ads in the history of irritating ads do you? Surely not, that would be gold-plated dumb.This is, however, what Cadbury Schweppes has done. Did the client look at this and think: "OMG I don't get it? Shall I just nod and smile as the agency sell it to me?"He must have. This campaign is a disaster. Every time I see it I have to mute the ad and I’m really not that much of a muter.Cadbury Schweppes has such an up-hill struggle to wrest away the market from Wrigley, which has dominated the UK for so long.It has a much better position in the US, where through its control of Adams (it bought that firm in 2003), which makes Trident (Dentyne, Halls cough sweets and Bubbalicious), and has more than 30% of the market.In the UK it has 5% and with that it just has to do better. It's only right that there should be competition, but Wrigley could do nothing and not lose market share.Chewing gum is a sector of the market exactly known for great advertising. Can anyone remember an ad other than the 2003 Wrigley Xcite ad (you remember, the one with the dog being vomited up, which was created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and racked up 600 complaints).I can't. That spot (showing a man lying on the couch next to a half-eaten kebab after a heavy night out. As he wakes up, he gags and a black and white dog emerges from his mouth) was pulled. This ad should be pulled but for different reasons.
Gordon Macmillan
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