I’v always been unimpressed by yogurt advertising generally and Activia’s advertising in particular. But I hate their latest ad campaign (which googling suggests was by RKCR/Y&R) with a shouting-at-the-TV passion:
That’s the ‘New Year’ execution. On air at the moment (but not on youtube) is an even worse seasonally-unspecific happy women eating yogurt execution.
The whole thing just screams ‘over-involved-client’. Its easy to imagine the client feedback – we need to see the women having a great time together really enjoying the great taste of Activia, while communicating its health benefits. We’d like to include our Brand Ambassador Gok Wan again to emphasise Activia’s role in supporting self confidence.
You can imagine the shoot and edit too – Can they look like they’re enjoying the product a bit more? If they’re really happy shouldn’t they be dancing?
Perhaps the agency are sick of fighting for decent creative that drives more than simply awareness through massive media spend. Perhaps they just took the money and ran. Perhaps they had their hands tied by the need to fit in with the global campaign. It’s still an awful ad.
Spot on comment, Gemma! I wonder if the ‘general public’ viewer finds it as cringeworthy as we do…?