Head Chapstick


See the first commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0HAmqYTJqo

Now watch the one that started all the buzz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0HAmqYTJqo

Although this commercial may be the lowest-tech, smallest budget, TV spot I’ve ever seen, I have heard a lot of people talking about it in the last couple months. And for this reason I have decided to write about it because I feel it needs some kind of constellation prize for recognition. Although the product isn’t incredibly technologically advanced, and neither is their spot, its funny how many people I’ve had conversations with about it. Although I believe this is just a case of “its so bad, its almost good”, an that the people at Head-On must have just stumbled upon this hoping to be humorously dumb, it worked. It was so bad that people noticed it in ‘almost’ a good way.

I guess people noticed it because it was obviously poorly made and in every sense of the word, horrible, and annoying, but the key to all this was that the Head-on people saw that people thought these things of their advertising, and then they changed it and poked fun at themselves. I think this is why people respond to the commercial in a more positive light. Even if this commercial may not be here for the long run it seems to have been buzz worthy enough for college students to be talking about it, although we most likely won’t be buying it anytime soon.

The Maloof Brothers, the Palms, and a $6,000 Carl’s Jr. Meal



Watch this spectacle and read about it at:
http://adage.com/vidt?pId=1

The commercial starts with a slo-mo, black and white, paparazzi shot of the Palms hotel and the Maloof brothers getting out of a limo. The screen flashes “Net worth: 1 Billion dollars”. They go and sit down in their hotel, pull out their sacks of Carl’s Jr. and started eating, and a girl comes by and pours them some wine. And that, my friends, is the Carl’s Jr. $6,000 meal combo. The spot ends with the shot, “exclusively at the Palms”. Far better than the dude ass-slapping the cow to make a milk shake. I give this commercial two thumbs up. It made me stop what I was doing and watch it till it was done. Of all the hotel/casinos, Carl’s Jr. chose to ask the Maloof brothers, who are pretty legendary, to do this spot with a bottle of five thousand and some odd dollars, decades-old wine. Actually, according to Ad Age, it is a "$5,994 bottle of Petrus ’82 Pomerol wine". Now that’s a Vegas worthy combo meal.

All in all, I think it made Carl’s Jr very classy looking- something I never thought I would ever say, but I must admit, I think higher of them now, than say McDonald’s or Wendy’s. I suppose, now that I think about it the Paris Hilton commercial with the western bacon burger, or something to that effect, was a celebrity centered concpet. But I haven’t seen fast food go ‘all out’ like Carl’s Jr. has, and I think that it’s a pretty good use of their money, it works and this philosophy really does get my attention. Although I may not be more inclined to eat my Carl’s Jr. fast-food burger and fries with a pricey bottle of wine, in my head they have a more sophisticate image. And it seems to be working, the president and CEO says it was smashing and been a real success.

Read what the Maloof brothers said in an interview about the commercial:
http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/43246.html
http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/sep/28/maloof-brothers-star-next-carls-jr-ad/