Today I saw a new version of an ad from a year or so ago for “new” 5 React Gum. It’s basically like three people trying the gum while sitting in a chair in some large nuclear plant cooling tower or something like that, and as they taste the gum, they see these huge black globules of goo turn into different shapes, like, say, a butterfly, but with just one shape for each person; then they explain that “everyone experiences it differently”. Well, this reminded me of the old ad, where three different people were strapped into three different chairs and each forced (I’d have to assume against their will) to chew this new 5 React Gum in what I guess is the torture chamber from the end of the movie Brazil, and when they did, they saw these enormous black globs of goo appear and morph into different shapes (one shape for each person). Now doesn’t this sound familiar? Like maybe from the earlier sentence in this paragraph? Actually, the ads are almost identical, as far as I could tell, except that the globs of goo morph into different shapes this time than they did in the earlier ad. So if it’s so similar, why bother changing it at all? Well, maybe more to the point would be, if you’re going to change something about the ad, why not change the biggest problem with it?
So, what’s such a big problem with associating the taste of a chewing gum with the visual equivalent of a giant glob of black goo that looks like dirty motor oil, you might ask? I know it sounds delicious, but here’s the problem: the earlier ad was running during the BP Gulf oil spill, and the delicious-looking black goo that looked like crude oil spilling into water then morphed into the following three shapes (mind you, they were all still dripping with the black goo and were still the same oily consistency even when assuming the new shapes): 1.) an oil-covered bird, 2.) a dirty, oily V-8 muscle-car engine, 3.) an oil-soaked octopus. I am not exaggerating or inventing any of this, and I will attach a link to this ad on YouTube to prove it. Now, first of all, why would a big oil spill make you want to chew gum; and then, why would an oily bird, a dirty car engine, or even a clean octopus be desirable for association with the flavor of any product? So there’s that problem. But then on top of that, imagine running that ad during the biggest oil spill in American history!
Now, in all fairness, while I have to admit that the ad’s television run did, in fact, preceded the BP Gulf oil spill, it continued to run throughout the whole oil spill, and they didn’t even pull the ad from the air during all of that time, with the oil spill being the biggest news story of that period. Well, all I can say is: “Yum! Where do I get that mouth-watering oil spill gum?” It’s funny that they made a new version of this ad at all, but since they did at least think to alter the shapes of the glob images, you’d think that they would have changed the most important part: the black oil. Couldn’t they have at least changed the color of the oily, gooey substance? Or were they worried that then it would look too much like transmission fluid, brake fluid, and anti-freeze? Because dirty motor oil is way better-tasting than those, right? Especially for a chewing gum.
Want to see that ad? I’m not kidding about this; it’s real, and it ran during the BP oil spill:
