Bon Appetit
The best food commercial last year didn’t feature lobster claws dripping with butter, cartoon cows, or instantly recognizable mascots. And there weren’t the usual waving American flags, tow-headed toddlers, or sassy, self-deprecating celebrities that clutter so many non-food ads anywhere in sight.
No, the star of the 2014 was an ice-cream scoop and a battery of tubs of ice cream.
“2014 Baskin-Robbins ads were short and sweet—achieving great success in only 15 seconds,” says marketing-analytics firm Ace Metrix, which dubbed the ice-cream chain one of the Brands of the Year thanks to its super-short “Endless Variety” commercials.
Ace Metrix crowned the Baskin-Robbins television-ad series the best of last year in the category of quick-service restaurants, with Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut a distant second and third. The commercials, which aired mostly in spring and summer and were created by Atlanta-based 22squared, earned Baskin-Robbins its second win in the category in two years. And though it’s easy enough to dismiss the prize as nothing more than an obscure win for a chain restaurant’s PR firm, it could foreshadow the way more and more food companies may pitch their products on TV.
Ace Metrix, a California-based company, generates its results by surveying at least 500 viewers within 24 to 48 hours of a TV spot’s first showing, then asks them to rate each ad according to standards including watchability and persuasiveness. It also notes whether viewers gave the thumbs-up to a commercial because it, say, increased their desire for a product, came off as likeable, or gave them a ton of usable information.
“Baskin-Robbins excels in its ability to drive consumer Desire,” Ace Metrix marketing manager Kristina Lyng writes in an email.
“We strive to make our products the heroes in our TV advertising in order to maximize appetite appeal, given the fun nature of Baskin-Robbins’ product lineup,” John Costello, president of global marketing and innovation for Dunkin’ Brands, the Baskin-Robbins parent company, wrote in an e-mail. The goal of the 2014 campaign, he said, was to focus on the fact that the company has a flavor library of over 1,200 kinds of ice cream.
One of the TV spots, dubbed “Endless Variety,” shows sweeping shots of a variety of ice-cream smoothies, a handless scoop digging into tubs of various flavors of ice cream, and shots of ice-cream-filled blenders—all so quick that you’d miss them if you blinked. It ends with a Cappuccino Blast frozen drink towering over a fleet of ice-cream bowls of many flavors. The voiceover script is minimal, consisting of a friendly male voice and mostly two-word sentences: “Choose it. Scoop it. Pour it. Blend it.”
About as simple as it could get, yet it went through the roof with viewers.
“While there aren’t many ice-cream national advertisers, Baskin-Robbins still does an amazing job at branding its ads,” Lyng writes. “B-R hones in on its branding by surrounding its product offerings with its main product—ice cream—whether it is in a cake, cone or cup, it’s all about ice cream.”
Indeed, when viewers were asked what they liked best about the the whole line of “Endless Variety” Baskin-Robbins ads last year, 29 percent to 38 percent said it was the product featured. Second place went to the visuals (16 percent to 25 percent of those surveyed).
“The first impression I got seeing it was that I could taste it in my mouth,” says Priya Raghubir, professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “It pushed you to smell, taste, almost feel the ice cream, a sensual delight which people are reluctant to want to indulge in. This really appeals to all the hedonic senses, and there’s nothing to distract from the ice cream, and it doesn’t allow you to get bored or want to zap it. It’s excellent execution!”
And expect to see more food commercials along the same lines, Raghubir says. Commercials in general are trending toward either being short (15 seconds) or extra long (1 minute or more) rather than the traditional 30-second spots, Raghubir says. Companies using TV to sell their food, which tend to be diet-busting luxuries, benefit from quick hits that appeal to the senses without giving consumers too much time to think about the downside of scarfing down, say, a 12-ounce bar of rich chocolate. (Backing up Raghubir’s theory, the top casual-restaurant TV spot was LongHorn Steakhouse, which used similar short, sweeping shots of its offerings—you can compare the commercials below.)
“You just totally focus on this ice cream that you’d [otherwise] feel guilty about having,” she says.
“Desire—that feeling of ‘That looks delicious and I want it’—can easily be achieved in a short amount of time, given the right visuals,” Lyng writes.
Though the Baskin-Robbins spots tested very well across the board, they did best with an older crowd, peaking at the 36- to 49-year-old demographic. Raghubir didn’t find that at all surprising.
“Those are the people that are all dieting, so they’re the ones who care about their tummies!” she says. “The commercial makes the indulgence so sensuously appealing rather than a guilty pleasure—it’s celebrating ice cream!”
