GORILLA / Phil Collins Ad for Cadsbury and other "nonsensical" advertising

Last Friday when we saw a Cadsbury ad in class which entailed a giant Gorilla playing the drum part to Phil Collins' "I can feel it" song, a student remarked that he could not see why such an ad would attract consumers to Cadsbury at all. Professor Kagan responded that a certain assumed belief in the power of marketing is necessary to see the power in this ad.

I thought it was worth talking about ads that drive great following, both from TV ads historically, or contemporary "link baiting" online ads. 3 come to mind for me that are similar in that they are somewhat "nonsensical" but hilarious. Like the Cadsbury gorilla, there were the Energizer Bunny ads, and the E-Trade Baby.

I bring these ads up because we have learned that keeping keywords and content on sites focused on the central goal of the business the site represents, but conversely we see that "viral videos" and super powerful Link Baiting ads tend to stray from the central characteristics of the product, and create hilarious content to help people pass time.

My ultimate point is that the points are not entirely contradictory: I would think that the Energizer Bunny was super successful because the bunny had characteristics similar to the product, and the E-trade Baby relays the message that even a baby can be successful with E-trade online trading. The Cadsbury Gorilla....not so much.

Perhaps as a general Online Marketing insight, it might be really impactful to combine pure humor and inspiration with tying characters into the advertising message of the brand online, especially since 100% of browsers sight passing time as a major motivator. BUT also key is to tie the funny content with the fundamental characteristics of the product. NOT the gorilla.