From the e-mail bag, this question comes from Uri in Wichita Falls, Kansas:
Hey–since you used to work in advertising, do you have a favorite ad right now?
Good question. While it’s always subject to change, right now my hands down favorite ad on TV is what I’m calling the YAZ APOLOGY AD. This ad is basically a ‘WHOOPS, WE SCREWED UP WITH THE FDA IN OUR LAST AD, so now we have to run this one to make up for the damage we’ve done.’ To see why it’s great, let’s just go through our hand-dandy advertising review checklist:
Hilarious back story? CHECK
All great ads have a funny back story, and you don’t have to be an advertising expert to see this one. Woops—someone forgot to run that hip, cool new birth control ad we just launched with a $100 million TV campaign by the legal department and now the FDA is going to make us spend another $100 million to apologize for all the shit we got wrong. Ha, ha, ha, ha!
I wonder how many interns were sacrificed to the client in the making of this ad?
Unnecessary branding? CHECK
Yaz is so excited about branding, they even keep their apology ads on message. But why do you even have to create a brand image for birth control? I admit I’m not the definitive expert on what women are looking for in their birth control pill, but I’d guess the most important factors are:
- Will this allow me to have sex without getting pregnant (this is pretty important)
- Does it have horrible side effects like skin lesions, mood swings, and sensory hallucinations?
- Is it covered by insurance
I’m not sure things like “this pill really reflects my cool, outgoing lifestyle” are going to move too many consumers. If I were writing the campaign, it would be something like, “Hey, do you like having sex but not getting pregnant? Try Yaz! It’s birth control and it might even do other cool things too like clear up your skin. But what it’s really good at is getting you not pregnant. If that’s what you want, try Yaz. Yaz. Yaz. Yaz. Yaz. Yaz.” The ad would just be me reading this over the Yaz logo. Totlal production cost: $113.
Nonsensical Image/Copy Relationship? CHECK
Your words may say there are differences between PMS and PMMD but your body language says le’ts do it in the woman’s rest room. You know how I like it baby–without bloating, irritability, and possible liver hemorrhaging.
Absurd Tagline? CHECK
The Yaz tagline sums up everything great about this ad: Beyond Birth Control. What the hell is beyond birth control? You know what’s beyond birth control–having a baby. That’s what happens when you go beyond birth control. How about just, Birth Control. Yaz. It’s Birth Control. There you go, mission accomplished.
Use of Talking Animals? NEGATIVE
The only thing between this ad and true ad greatness would be talking animals, or maybe puppets or something. Oh well, I’m sure they made a mistake in the apology ad that they soon can apologize for.
FINAL THOUGHT: How do you feel having your birth control handled by a company that can’t produce :30 seconds of content without making a mistake? Isn’t not making a mistake a pretty fundamental componenet of birth control?
ADDITIONAL FINAL THOUGHT: If you go to the YAZ WEBSITE, you get a sense of how the Yaz brand promise changes by country. Click on the US as your country and you get the hip, urban, woman about the town campaing. Click on the Netherlands and you get what looks to be a normal, medical looking web site. Click on Asia and you get–I don’t know–true love in spring?
Tags: Madvertising, the e-mail bag