April 15, 2009
I Heart Hulu Ads
Smart, Funny--and Evil?
Humor is one of the most effective approaches in advertising. As one of my marketing students explained to me, there's often no real reason to choose one brand over another. If an ad makes the viewers laugh, however, it creates a positive mental association with the brand, essentially creating an irrational "reason" to choose that company. Tricky, huh?
Exhibit A: The Original Ad
Nowhere is the quest for humor more apparent than in Super Bowl ads. The Doritos snow globe ad (showcasing well-executed physical comedy) appeared to win the Super Bowl competition, at least in the short run. But the race is not always to the swift. The Hulu ad campaign, which was just getting started during the Super Bowl, has won the marathon, creating a whole new class of funny advertising.
The ads' premise is that your mother was right, and that television does rot your brain--but that's because it's a plot designed by brain-sucking aliens (played by Alec Baldwin, Eliza Dushku, and Seth MacFarlane). Entertaining, yes, but (ironically) the ads are just as psychologically devious as their jokes suggest, easing viewers' guilt over television consumption while making them laugh.
Alien Cheesecake
OK, so the Eliza Dushku ad (the shortest one by far) is more about her being sexy in a catsuit than about humor. That's par for the course (at least for women and comedy). But Alec Baldwin has found his calling as a comic actor, and Seth MacFarlane is perhaps the most convincing alien, if only because it is so damned freaky to hear all those voices coming out of one person. Seriously, it's like he's possessed or something.
Are we sure he's not speaking in tongues?
But the true genius of the ads lies in the 'alien' pretext, which suggests that believing television is bad for you is as ridiculous as believing in alien plots. Me, I've never had any guilt over watching TV, but I know plenty of people who do. What a brilliant ploy to seduce those guilt-ridden viewers, not only to watch more TV, but to do it on their computers, using Hulu, away from the prying eyes of those who would judge them.
It's almost plausible that the evil advertising geniuses at Hulu are aliens. Maybe not the brain-sucking kind, but at least the kind found in John Carpenter's "They Live," who want to reduce humans to a state of passive docility--I forget why. But that's OK. As long as I'm laughing, I'm sure everything will turn out just fine.
