A Few Strong Words…

Here’s an ad that caught my eye not too long ago. However, as I am beginning to realize, it did not catch my nose (a fact that I may be glad of…)

On the surface, this starts off as a great idea. Essentially, the ad is a plastic or vinyl sticker of a cup of Folger’s coffee that is placed over a manhole cover. Holes are punched through the sticker to allow the “steam” of the coffee to waft up from the cup. The campaign was designed for NYC; the tagline encircling the coffee cup reads: “Hey, City That Never Sleeps. Wake Up. Folgers.”

The visual is quite amusing. But then you start digging a bit deeper and wonder how it holds up in the real world. First, I think that the vinyl will quickly become dirty and/or ripped from all the traffic. Yes, I’ve seen stickers work before (grocery store stickers leap to mind) but this is outdoors, and covering an uneven surface.

Second, the smell that often wafts up from sewers is not one of coffee… If the association doesn’t put you off coffee, it might at least make you think twice before you reach for the Folgers!

There has been some discussion about whether or not this ad campaign was real, or at least implemented. Many have suggested that this image is simply a mock-up the marketing agency drew up for Folgers (Saatchi & Saatchi was the agency, apparently). However, it was all true — this was a real campaign.

You got to wonder what they were thinking. A huge company like Folgers, and a respected ad agency. Someone must have realized this was a bad idea.

If this was a city-wide campaign, then yes this would be a very bad idea. But dig deeper still and consider this. The marketing agency placed just one sticker on one manhole cover, and even that lasted just a couple of hours. In that time, passers-by took photos of it, sending it viral on the Internet. The campaign also got coverage in BusinessWeek, the New York Post, AdFreak, and other publications. It reached millions of people — more than it could have reached on that New York street corner alone.

And here we are, two years later and still talking about it. Not only was the ad itself creative, but the execution was just brilliant.

I think that ad did its job, don’t you?

~Graham

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