“Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!”
This is the big slogan for Butterfinger candy bars. It’s not bad, and it was even not badder back when it was new. (Actually, it was very catchy and pretty good for the time.) But it’s been used for over twenty years now, I think (!). How about something new, guys?
I have always joked about a new slogan being: “I’ll give you the finger if you take my Butterfinger!” But then this opened the door for another idea…
Um, this is going to get perhaps offensively suggestive, so for those of you who don’t wish to take a chance on being grossed out, or shocked, please skip the next two paragraphs, or else please read something else!
Okay, so here’s what I was going to say before we were so rudely interrupted: One of the big mantras of advertising is this: Sex Sells! It’s quite possibly the main slogan for advertising in general. So then, I thought, there is one way that Butterfinger could use sex suggestively and perhaps outrageously, but never actually show anything or even do anything objectionable whatsoever: the crudity and suggestiveness is all in the viewer’s mind. And that idea is this: Butterfinger’s new campaign slogan could be: “Finger me!”
So here’s how it would work: Some hot chick would say to some sexy guy, as they are watching a movie together: “Finger me!” And the guy says: “What?” And she says: “You know: finger me!” (Or: “You heard me! Finger me!”) So the guy hands the girl a Butterfinger candy bar, and she unwraps it and takes a bite, and says: “Mmmmm!” Then they go to the announcer’s pitch or whatever, and they show a product shot, and then we cut back to the couple, and the girl whispers to the guy: “I love it when you finger me!” (If sex sells, then this certainly will work, and it would at least get a lot of attention in any case. Plus, they could claim it’s completely innocent; and strictly speaking, it is.)
Okay, so that might get some people’s dander up, so there’s another possibility for this campaign: There is also another generally accepted meaning for the term “to finger” somebody, and that has to do with identifying a guilty party. So they could have an Agatha Christie-esque scenario with a murder, and a bunch of possible suspects in a drawing room, and the cops are there, and the Miss Marple-type detective says she’s going to “put the finger” on someone. So they all look worried, and then she pulls a Butterfinger candy bar out of her purse and puts it on some guy’s knee. Well, the guy who gets the candy bar says: “Hey, great! Thanks!” And he opens the candy bar and starts eating it, and then some gangster-type says: “How come you didn’t put the finger on me?” (And maybe she says she only had one, but that they’re easy to buy at any store, and that he should go buy one.) So then she says: “And now for the murderer…” And the slogan could be: “Butterfinger: We’ll put the finger on you!” Or else they could have some guilty-looking guy say: “You put the finger on me! Delicious!”
Oh, and I almost forgot: There is an AC/DC song from my childhood called “Put the Finger on You”! And it could be used for these ads! It’s on the album: For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), and it was very big when I was a kid.
