mr. palengke goes labandera – senator mar roxas’ Tide Detergent endorsement ad part 2

first posted in WAWAM! on june 22, 2008 : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/mar%20roxas

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senator mar roxas in this tide detergent commercial did not mention the tide brand name even once. he also did not touch the product and and in fact his only interaction with tide was when he pointed to the price discount on the pack.

is it a tide detergent tv commercial? hell, yeah! is it a product endorsement tv ad by the nationally elected senator? hell, yeah!

there is no mistaking – mr. palengke appeared in the tide commercial and is endorsing the product. why else would you display such huge bags of tide, standing up with the tide logo clearly seen? i don’t think you will ever see any store in the palengke where they display tide that way and certainly not in front of the store where it contains nothing but giant tide packs. the way tide was displayed and the shelf itself is simply not done in the palengkes.

this is not tide’s brandsell advertising. in the world of p&g advertising, this is considered as a tactical value advertising. it’s meant to sell tide’s large packs and promote big purchases among consumers in the palengke.

what? wait a minute. mr. palengke in a palengke promoting big pack purchases? something is very wrong about that!

first of all, detergent purchase habits says most consumers buy small packs for lower cash outlay. also, the palengke is where most DE and some lower C socio–eco users go to for their daily needs, and most of them go to the palengkes very often because they do no have the money to buy in bulk, thus the consumer practice is small price but more frequent purchases.

and the above is where we move in to a new topic – this is not just a product endorsement ad, it is actually a political campaign ad.

promoting large priced purchases for bulk detergent products is simply alien to the palengke goers. it’s consumers who go to supermarkets who do that, but hardly is that legitimate purchasing habit for those who shop in palengkes. very few palengke goers can afford large pack purchases, in fact it is in the palengke where you can buy literally a spoonful of anything, placed in small plastic bags. you can actually buy condiments and cooking needs in small plastic bags good for one cooking. for an advertising purist, you can argue this commercial is off strategy.

the fact that the mr. palengke, senator mar roxas commercial is situated in a palengke means only one thing – it’s a political ad.

but p&g is not foolish. they will not intentionally and knowingly air an off strategy commercial. being off strategy in p&g is a mortal sin that will get you fired the next minute you say it. i am certain they have done extensive consumer research on this tv commercial – from the choice of the talent to a full blown advertising pre-airing test and i bet they found that while this commercial is meant to be tactical, it has powerful brandsell characteristics.

is it a WAWAM!? it’s not entirely a WAWAM! for tide detergent. mr. palengke has excellent credentials and a huge following. it’s also not a WAWAM! for senator mr. roxas. he is getting national tv exposure highly consistent with his positioning as the mr. palengke. and for free! the media money behind it is being paid for by p&g.

again, is it a WAWAM!?

yes, it’s a WAWAM! for the filipino people and it’s soul. we can rationalize it all we want. we can take it down to technicalities like no brand name was said, but the fact remains, like judas, several pieces of silver worth millions of pesos in talent fee was exchanged for integrity, pride, honesty and honor in a nationally elected public office.

mr. palengke goes labandera – senator mar roxas’ Tide Detergent endorsement ad part 1

first posted in WAWAM! on june 14, 2008 and june 17, 2008 : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/mar%20roxas

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here is one of those tv ads – is this a product endorsement ad

 or a political ad?

this is what senator mar roxas has to say on this tide tv spot:

Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, who once pushed the detergent brand Tide, denied doing any product endorsements: “But I didn’t endorse. I didn’t say that the public should buy a product, nor did I hold any product. And I did not say that it was better than the others. It’s a public service announcement saying that all product sellers should be true to consumers.”

 source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080528-139254/Villar-cracks-whip-on-senators-in-ads

let’s get this out of the way first before a discussion on the merits of senator roxas’ tide tv commercial.

senator mar roxas

the above statement is an empty rationalization of the endorsement ad senator roxas did for tide detergent. it’s lawyer speak that’s building a wall of semantics to have some good things around it to have some things to defend something bad.

of course the tv commercial is an endorsement ad. he doesn’t have to hold the product, he doesn’t even have to say anything, it’s enough for his face to be in the commercial and that automatically makes it an endorsement tv ad of tide detergent.

aside from that, the fact that he got several million pesos as talent fee obviously makes it an endorsement ad.

will tide detergent, a leading detergent brand pay him millions to appear in that commercial for public service? who is he kidding?

tide detergent is one of the most competitive detergent brands in the market. it is manufactured by procter & gamble, the inventor of the “brand management” system and one of the savviest marketers in the world. they will NOT get mar roxas to appear in their tv commercial for reasons other than selling cases of tide detergent.

 not only did they pay senator mar roxas a handsome talent fee, they are spending hundreds of millions of pesos to air the tv commercial. there is nothing that tide detergent nor procter & gamble does that is not about selling more cases of its products.

senator escudero’s circulan tv spot – undeserving of the good senator

 first posted in WAWAM! on july 24, 2008 (source : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/escudero)

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i don’t know about you, but after seeing senator escudero and his wife in this circulan tv spot, i vowed NEVER to buy circulan!

i am happy that escudero is a senator and he is not an actor. i am also glad the wife is his wife and not an actress. senator escudero do not have any talent in acting. escudero came out as very stiff, not at all engaging. at some point in the ad, i felt escudero was about to growl like a tiger and spring out from the tv to attack me. he looked real stern and menacing.

the wife was supposed to provide the foil, the tenderness in the ad, but she looked too flirty and yes flighty, nearly out of character for a senator’s wife.

the wife’s acting besides, the copy points were nowhere near anything respectable. all it said was that instead of drinking several medication, just drink circulan and you will be fine. the ad suffers from not having a consumer insight and a weak positioning. after watching the ad a few times, i am still not sure what the benefit one is supposed to get from circulan.

the punchline at the end, said by the senator’s wife, almost made me throw up. i’m not sure if it’s the copy lines or the way the wife delivered it or the way senator escudero reacted to it. i think it’s all of the above.

the intent for that last line is to be endearing or cute at the least, but the way she delivered it and the accompanying acting was too flirty. and more importantly, why in the world did she make fun of it? that was supposed to be a tie up to the stature of the senator. because she made light of it, so now, we’re left with not knowing if we should believe her or not. and if it was joke or if it was serious.

it’s obviously nothing more than just a political ad for the senator. i do hope they will no longer air this tv spot, it will ruin his chances of getting elected or re-elected to any public office, not to mention turn off potential buyers of circulan.

nothing in this is the fault of the senator or his wife. (she is his wife, right? she was not identified in the ad.)

this is mostly the storyboard’s fault and  some of it is the director’s fault.

the senator escudero should have been given a much better material. the copy writing was not good, the positioning nowhere and there was no creative concept. i don’t think a lot of time was spent writing this ad. there is really no commercial to speak of. i feel the storyboard was not worth filming into a commercial.

the director of the commercial also felt like he wasn’t there. the staging looked like it was a home video. there were a lot of scenes where the director should have shouted cut and re-take the shot. it felt like the whole ad was shot with only one take.

the senator and his wife are not actors and it should have been the director’s job to teach them or direct them to appear like they are. but the director did not lift a finger in this ad. he allowed the senator and his wife to show their inexperience in acting  in ads. both talents did not look good in the ad.

senator escudero is a very smart and honorable man. he is one of the most promising young senators in the country. it was a shame that circulan allowed this kind of commercial to be filmed for the senator. i am also shocked that senator escudero or his staff accepted the offer to shoot the storyboard they were given. they should have rejected the storyboard outright. the storyboard had no intelligence and no class, the exact opposite of what i think senator escudero is.

for making me want to throw up, this tv spot is a WAWAM!