Originality? Who needs it.
Every product category carries with it its own set of presumptions, tones and imagery. What this leads to is a degree of consistency across all attempts to sell said category to the consumer. This might be why industry veterans have told me and my fellow juniors to ‘paradigm shift when possible’ - in other words, take one category’s cues and make them work for something else entirely (selling cereal as if you’re selling a holiday, sort of).
Why am I going on about this? All this comes to mind due to a recent run of client work I’ve had to deal with. The client in question was trying to push range of gourmet meat products, including jerky, onto the unassuming masses.
The sausages sold themselves once you talked up the ingredients, texture, and aroma. The jerky on the other hand left me a little stumped at first - it isn’t the most common snack food for Aussies to dig into, not even when drunk. When pondering this fact, I realised that I needed to create occasions for guys young and old to eat jerky - they needed to see it as an any time, any where indulgence.
I adopted a tone as dry as the meat itself, conjuring up scenarios so generic and banal that they could slot into the daily interactions of any bloke from 18 to 50. I was loving it more and more with very word that sprung from my finger tips. I felt like prolific advertising love child of Don Draper and David Ogilvy. Even the account coordinator loved it. This is when another member of the accounts team takes a peek - sure he says he loves it but adds on fact that the approach seems oddly familiar.
Above is why the nosey accounts person thought my work seemed familiar. It’s a campaign from Canada, one I’ve never seen or heard of before. This execution is what brings me right back to my original point - certain products have unavoidable creative baggage. Did I change my approach because of this? No, no I did not. Who cares if a couple of ice hockey loving denim wearing pancake fanatics used a similar tone to me in a series of old TVCs? Jerky for now is not something suited to paradigm shifting creative, especially not when the bulk of the business minds on the client side are likely to be fairly conservative, I mean they are people who think a tired, old form of meat preservation is the basis for a great snack food.
What did I actually create? Well, a few examples are up, albeit unofficially. Take a peek
