Let me take you back to 2004, around February. Maybe someone called you up. Maybe they sent you the original email which started this whole thing. But, I just know that if you didn't see or talk about the infamous Quiznos Tv Spot with Spongmonkeys, you were on another planet.
I'm writing this because I really want to know how many people hated it or loved it. For me, I laughed like crazy when I saw the ads. I even learned the song by accident. But hey, I have a dark sense of humor, so normal will not, ever, apply to me. So when I finally saw a tv ad done exactly with people like me in mind (sick bitch that I am), I was delighted. At last! My kind of ad! Also, I love Quiznos. Screw Jared. The Spongmonkeys made me think that Quiznos got me, in some weird fucked up way. I was damn proud to be a client.
But. There were people who hated, HATED, the tv campaign. But you know what? They gave me weird excuses (well I could say lame as well), that only AE's would say, like:
• "They are rats, so Quiznos restaurants are full of them". Um... yeah, that's the FIRST thing I would think of. A company proudly advertising their rat problem. Genius #1, check.
• "They are not preety animals. They are ugly so the sandwhiches taste as bad as them." Einstein's son, probably.
• "What is the strategy, anyways? What is the point?" - and this came from a creative. I almost puked when I heard this one. The point is to laugh or shock you, butthole.
• "It's too disgusting. I would never buy Quiznos now." Yeah, right. Maybe you are the type that loooove Old Navy Tv ads too... sucker.
Look, those ads were made with one idea in mind. Either to make you have a nice laugh or to shock you senseless. Not anything else. I understand that weird animals might not be your cup of tea. But the point is that you watched and maybe you talked about it. And that, in my book, is what ads are supposed to be.
11 comments:
I personally don't like the campaign, but then again, I don't like Quizno's either. But I do recognize that it fulfilled what every ad should: spontaneous, different, shocking, memorable, catchy... In fact, this campagin is far more memorable and lasting than many of the text-book "great" campaigns out there.
Even though I have a fairly warped sense of humor myself -- I thought the Zapruder film was a veritable laff riot - for me this campaign hit a new high (or low) in creative self-indulgence.
Yes, it was memorable and shocking. But that's not enough. Showing the late Ethel Merman making hot monkey love to Ernest Borgnine would be memorable and shocking, too. But would that make for an effective commercial?
I don't know if any of you guys remember the Outpost.com commercials from way back in the late 90s that showed gerbils being shot out of a cannon. They were certainly memorable and shocking -- and won a ton of awards to boot. Just one problem: They didn't work -- and Outpost.com is no more.
At the risk of sounding like a suit, ads must do more than simply grab a viewer by the eyeballs. They have to create some sort of interest and desire in the product or service they are selling.
Call me hopelessly old fashioned, but a pair of hideously screeching puddles of vomit with eyes just doesn't make me want to jump in my car and head out to the nearest Quizno's. But, hey, that's just me.
For what it's worth, I also hated this campaign because the creatives behind it didn't even come up with the spongmonkeys in the first place. They took someone else's idea and made it their "own."
Opinions in regards to this campaign will always vary and there's one tiny detail... Everyone has point. Does the lovechild of a hairball cumshot and vomit mutated gerbils make me want to eat Quizno's? Certainly not. Do these ads get people talking about the superior product. Certainly not. Do people still remember the disgusting critters and at times seem nostalgic when remembering something from last yeaR? As messed up as it sounds, I've heard people identify with this campaign to such a level. I didn't love the campaign and I don't think it was brilliant but I do think it took a certain degree of balls from the client to say.. ok let's go with whatever the fuck you guys did.. after all you know better... or something on those lines.
I spoke to people from the agency that produced those ads and one persons's take on the ads were that they were designed to cater to teens with a warped sense of humor and who look to advertising for quotable entertainment rather than information. It might seem screwed in the head... but from what I could gauge from different people's reactions, it kind of worked. People sang the fucking song while twisting their faces into would-be spongemonkey expresions.
Now one final word.. like it or not.. hate it or love it... did people talk about the ads, create buzz and have clients, customers and the competition ask if the product was as good as Subway's? That might be a yes, but everybody has a right to their own opinion.
Interesting perspective, Joker. And you make some very valid points of your own. Certainly, a campaign this polarizing is bound to elicit widely diverging opinions. People either love it or hate it -- but they can't ignore it. Still, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Did sales go up? Did those teens reward Quizno's for "entertaining" them by eating there more often? Does anyone know?
Only quiznos knows for sure Ishmael. It's debatable but the campaign didn't last as long as other notable campaigns so you'd have to see the feedback the company received versus sales versus public opinion of the company. Anyways,they did change campaigns but they've stuck with the weird dynamic now having a baby be their spokesperson... or spokesbaby... or something. Who knows, would have been quite interesting to see those creatives convincing the client though.
To keep the Spongmonkey incident argument going, according to ClickZ.com:
The infamous "spongemonkey" Web and TV ads -- which feature rodents with scary human eyeballs and even scarier human mouths lauding Quiznos subs -- have provoked more than 30,000 calls and e-mails and quadrupled traffic on Quiznos' site.
Responses to the ads "run the gamut, from 'You rock!' to 'You're out of your minds,'" according to Kerry Feuerman, vice chairman and creative director for the Martin Agency in Richmond, Virginia. The agency worked with Joel Veitch, the Spongemonkeys' creator, to put together the ads.
"I've not had so much response to a campaign in 24 years," Feuerman said.
Traffic on Quiznos' site zoomed to 575,000 unique visitors when the TV ads launched in February, according to comScore Media Metrix. This is more than four times the number of unique visitors to Quiznos' site the previous month, January, which saw 129,000 unique visitors.
Wanna read the whole story?
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3361861
The intense dislike I had for the Spongmonkey commercial pales in comparison with my rabid loathing for the Baby Bob campaign. At least the Spongmonkeys were different -- excruciatingly annoying but different. But to resurrect a cringe-inducing concept first used for a computer manufacturer that went bust to sell sandwiches. . . that's just so wrong on so many levels.
I don't think Martin's Spongmonkey commercials were a particularly tough sell. I believe the client was specifically looking for an idea that was out of the box and in your face. (After all, the agency that had the account before Martin was Cliff Freeman.) I guess it was just a little more than they could handle.
OK, I like to fancy myself pretty open to new and exciting concepts, but I'm going to come clean here and confess that these commercials just totally icked me out. My first thought when I saw them, was "What moron in the Quizno's marketing department thought it would be a good idea to market food with something that looks like a dead rat?" The thought of going to a Quizno's to this day still creeps me out. Did I remember the campaign - yes, I did. Do I spend $ at Quizno's because of it - no, in fact, I DON'T spend $ at Quizno's because of it. (don't tell me how irrational this is - I already know. I'm telling you, as a consumer, those ads just really grossed me out!)
One of the funniest things I heard regarding this campaign was on the Tom Joyner morning show where this female comedian called the Quizno's marketing dept to complain that she was really upset about seeing the "fur turds" on their commercial, as it reminded her of the time her dog at a rat and pooped it out, and she was really traumatized, etc. That poor marketing assistant dude was HILARIOUS, trying to field that phone call. I laughed my ASS off!
Anyway, in my opinion, marketing a product is not just about creating ads that people will remember (vampire advertising, anyone?) It's about enticing them to buy/use your product, and increase brand awareness/marketshare, right?
I'll be the first to say that with all the clutter out there, you need some really crazy sometimes to break out of the clutter. And I'll also admit, that this was most DEFINITELY an extremely IMPACTFUL campaign - that's for sure. Anything that can gross me out so bad that I can no longer set foot in a particular restaurant, most definitely has made an impact! I'm just not sure it's the impact that Quizno's was hoping for!
Mediabeach, you don't know what you are missing. Let's do this: try the tuna sandwhich. If you don't like it, you can kick me in the balls.
Ten years later and I still love this commercial. I'm serious. I first saw it when I was watching TV by myself late at night, and it was such a WTF moment, I was convinced I had hallucinated it. I could not stop singing it for about a month. It definitely gave me good feelings about the Quiznos brand. (FWIW, I was in the commercial's target age demographic, but not its gender demographic.)
I loved this commercial! My girlfriend hated it, so that was win win for me. Haha!
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