Here we have a commercial that makes a very specific claim: Women who eat a Special K for breakfast actually do weigh less. (I think someone may have read my post about the Whole Grain Cheerios ad with the ridiculously vague claim.) But then they say here that when you do weigh less, your closet feels like a candy store. But then won’t you eat all your clothes and gain weight? Or do they mean that it feels like a candy store because everything looks so good, but you know you’re not allowed to have any. They don’t really say what they mean, exactly, with this candy store metaphor, but I guess they’re trying to make us all hungry so we’ll pig out on candy, and then we’ll have to buy and eat Special K to lose all that weight. (What a dastardly plan!)
I am making fun of this commercial above, but I really kinda like it. In this spot, a woman finds a secret panel that opens up a whole hidden walk-in closet, and she has a wonderful time looking through all the clothes and trying them on one outfit after another. This is basically saying that by losing weight through a diet of Special K at breakfast, your old clothes you didn’t fit in any longer will suddenly fit you again, and rediscovering them will be like a magical experience of having this whole “new” closet full of clothes possibilities. So you’d be discovering and enjoying them all over again. That’s cute and inspired. The way the ad is shot, and the art direction and casting also make this ad have a magical quality to it, and I think people will probably respond well to this. (It also uses the company colors of red & white as a visual message for brand identity.)
It’s not easy to keep coming up with fresh ideas to communicate the benefits of weight loss without seeming didactic or overbearing. That’s why it’s nice to see a different approach, making everything seem magical.
And this ad actually demonstrates the intended meaning of their tagline: “What will you gain when you lose?” You’ll gain a whole renewed wardrobe of clothes that will feel exciting and new again! And it’s a good idea to directly illustrate what this slogan means, because otherwise it could be read as meaning that when you lose something, like a boyfriend, or a treasured object, or a job or contest, then you’ll get all depressed and binge on desserts, making you gain lots of weight. I like the slogan, but it can be twisted into that meaning as well. But hey: then you’d have to buy and eat Special K for a long time to lose that weight, so you’d be upping their profits too! So maybe it works well for a slogan/tagline either way!
Here’s the special Special K spot:
