I am not a fan of either the talking animal or the talking baby genre. They've been done a million times and rarely have they been anything but awful.
However, every now and then someone does it well. They take a clichéd idea and make it into something good.
One of the cases in which talking babies were done well was E-Trade. Before I go too far, they weren't all gems. But some of the writing was excellent and very entertaining. I don't know who the writer(s?) were, but at some point Grey had some excellent talent on this business.
But, as always, good advertising can't withstand the relentless onslaught of baboons in the marketing suite.
A couple of years ago I wrote the following...
Marketing people just refuse to leave shit alone. Somewhere they got the idea that everything they see needs to be changed and everything they change is an improvement...
Whenever I read in the trades that a successful advertiser has hired a new CMO, I know a festival of laughter is on the way. They (the new CMOs) always say the same thing:Recently E-Trade got a new CMO, which, of course, meant a new agency which, of course, means a new campaign. And what an inexcusable piece of excrement it is.
"X Corp has been very successful. I am not here to change that. My focus is just on making sure that we ______."Amazingly, making sure that they ________ always seems to require that they change everything.
Of course, this horrible, disgraceful, odious (am I making myself clear?) campaign is being justified with the usual steaming pile of hogwash about "consumers" and "research" and "control" and "spaces."
Just reading this crap is so depressing. It has to make anyone with a sense of what advertising should and could be disgusted that advertising decisions are in the hands of such philistines.
When are these people going to learn that a distinctive campaign idea is worth ten-thousand of their vacuous strategy documents and hinky research reports?
The new CMO, in the time-honored tradition of insolent duplicity, gives the old campaign the obligatory counterfeit high praise while sticking an ice pick in the heart of something good in support of something unspeakably horrible.
I hate to do this to you on a Monday morning, but take a look at this monstrosity and try not to lose your breakfast.
And if the spot isn't bad enough, these flat tires have sullied the name of my company (Type A) for their loathsome new campaign, "Type E."
There are so many things I want to punish these people for.
