Blog Archive07.06.06 Eat a Crunch Bar, Be a Rejuvenile Another entry in the bulging it-just-doesn—t-get-more-rejuvenile-than-this file: On the morning commute yesterday, I found myself idling in front of a billboard picturing two guys in business suits, legs dangling from opposite ends of a teeter totter, happily munching on Nestle Crunch bars. The slogan: ?For the kid in you.? The companion website includes a nifty splash page showing a businessman who takes a bite of a Crunch Bar and is immediately catapulted up on a pogo stick, along with flash animation of much happy hula-hooping and trampoline-bouncing. The TV spot (archived on site under “Crunch News”) is a crafty split screen montage that shows an adult on his morning commute (while pedaling a big wheel), a woman on an escalator (while riding down a slide) and a fellow going up a staircase (while climbing a treehouse ladder). This is all on-the-nose in terms of reaching the rejuvenile market? perhaps too much so. Like last year’s Toyota “Put it in Play” campaign, which associated the latest line of Corollas and Celicas with favorite kidgames like tag and dodgeball, this one is so obvious that I think it may cause the more cynically minded quasi-adults to squirm (or at least roll our eyes). We rejuveniles are all for recapturing the joys of kid-dom, but I’m not sure we’re quite so gullible to think that a bar of milk chocolate laced with bits of dehydrated rice is the magic ticket back into a lost childlike wonderland. And it offers yet another reminder that as much as the rejuvenile phenomenon springs from a genuine and healthy impulse to reconnect with a childlike part of ourselves, it’s also being nurtured and encouraged by marketers attempting to reach beyond our critical adult defenses and get us to? buy stuff. Then again, maybe adults could use the occasional reminder that sometimes contentment isn’t found in responsibility and efficiency but in the warm embrace of a tasty bar of chocolate. Me, I’m a Junior Mint guy. Posted at 12:40 pm in Rejuvenile Consumer Goods | 1 Comments The ad campaign has a rather facile view of recapturing childhood. As an adult I certainly miss things like jumping on trampolines (I never mastered the hula hoop) but those aren’t the things that defined my childhood and aren’t the things that I miss. It’s the intangibles ... and no offense, but a candy bar isn’t going to make me feel full of possibilities again. That doesn’t make me want a candy bar any less, of course. But for different reasons. Posted by cybele on 07/12 at 12:19 PM Next entry: More on the irresistible lure of that big red ball Previous entry: On Colbert, Nuance and a Shitload of Altoids |
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