As you know, I am fascinated by YouTube as a study in what appears to be one of the great entrepreneurial success stories of the year.
The latest development, from the New York Times, in the YouTube march to omnipresence is Procter & Gamble's (NYSE: PG) crazy bet on a corney (at that might be nice) video intended to attract young new coffee drinkers to its Folgers Brand.
The video is stupid. I'm not sure whether the folks at P&G think that young people are stupid or whether they are stupid like a fox and they hope that young people will mock the video and inadvertently absorb the branding message.
The latter may be true as a number of classic OLD folgers commercials (this one is funny) now appear on YouTube along with a variety of parodies. If nothing else, they'll get a few young people talking about how stupid the ad execs are. I guess the question is, will they be sipping Folgers while they say it?
Either way, YouTube wins.
Click "continue reading" below to watch the stupid video.
I would classify the Happy Mornings video as extremely goofy rather than stupid. The clothing, haircuts and facial expressions are all so over-the-top that I have to conclude that P&G are really spoofing the genre with this - especially when the yellow people start showing up in bedrooms and showers.
Add in an overly cheery song with some offbeat lyrics ("you can sleep when you are dead") and there's no need to mock it - it mocks itself.
Posted by: Ariel | July 10, 2006 7:19 PM | Permalink to Comment