Here we have a couple of incompetent police officers shilling for some new breakfast cookie things. They say it gives them the energy they need to perform their duties. But they perform their duties so incompetently, does this really end up showing the product in a good light? After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, giving you the energy to perform or denying you energy so you under-perform, right? Well, then is it that much of a stretch to assume that these guys are so bad at their jobs because their breakfast is not sufficient to fuel them appropriately for their demanding work? It just seems like you could easily read that into this commercial.
Also, if their judgment is bad enough for them to assault a beehive like they do here, then isn’t their judgment about breakfast foods equally suspect? They like this belVita stuff, so couldn’t we assume it’s a bad choice, just like the other demonstrably questionable choices we see them make in this spot? It kind of seems that way to me. I mean, this ad is cute, but it makes them look like they suffer from a lack of judgment, energy and competence, and as such, it looks to me like it could be that their breakfast food is not up to the task of fueling them for the day. They’re the ones making the argument about being fueled up by the breakfast food, and then we see them being sluggish, slow-witted, and incompetent. Is this really the message they’re trying to send?
I like the spot: it’s cute and funny. But it does seem to me that the argument they’re making at the beginning is proven to be false by what they are showing us in the ad. And after all, actions speak louder than words, do they not? So cute or not, this is sending the wrong message, at least in my opinion.
To fix this would be easy. They could have them say that before they found belVita, they didn’t have the energy they needed for their active profession; then they could have shown them doing dumb stuff like crashing through the fence, whacking the beehive, etc. Then they could say that since they’ve found belVita, they’re more on the ball than they used to be; and they could show them doing something effectively. And they could start with the radar gun on the baseball, to match the “on the ball” statement (this would be the transition piece), and then show them doing things very energetically and effectively. It would be a “before and after” type of ad, and that way they could keep the comedy, but it would still make the food they’re advertising look good, rather than like Keystone Kops Cookies. See what I mean?
Here’s the commercial for a breakfast that protects and serves:
