Cuckoo for Cocoa Ads

The good folks at M&M/Mars and BBDO New York have combined recently to give the world one of the more uplifting cinema experiences of the year: a series of commercials in which hapless, ambitionless zeroes with terrible haircuts make improbable journeys from their couches to the throne of mankind after eating Snickers bars.

These plot-heavy monstrosities that have lately been sullying the timeouts of NFL games are, I think, the most hateful spots produced this year. I was shocked to learn that they were not the work of the British, the usual masterminds of especially loathsome ad campaigns; the key villains here appear to be Swedes. That said, the "Make it Happen With Snickers" series is revolting in a way that really transcends nationality. Like the industry itself, its ugliness is a global phenomenon.

If you haven't caught the spots yet, here's Adweek's enthusiastic summary of the worst of the three ads, a fiend called "President": "A man is sitting in his living room when he eats a Snickers. The burst of energy makes him help a friend move, and when he yells in pain after a couch falls on him, a talent scout hears his voice and signs him to be part of a boy band, "The Residents." When people mishear the band's name, they mistakenly elect him president – all thanks to a Snickers bar... Did you get all that? What could be the plot of a two-hour movie is stuffed into a 60-second spot, one of three new ads by BBDO that begin breaking today..."

Parenthetical message to the Adweek folks: you're wrong. This couldn't be the plot of a two-hour movie. Not one that wasn't dreamed up for use in torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, anyway. Though, of course, for that purpose it would be beautifully effective, if only the storyline was continued a little. After the Snickers eater is elected president, he drops fuel-air bombs on Damascus and forces all women on the Arabian peninsula to work in bikini car washes. Cue the tagline: "Make it happen with Snickers – and air power!"

Take away their Korans and make them watch two hours of that: see how long it takes them to confess. Although there are a few detractors who think they're a little too busy, the BBDO/Mars ads are being hailed in the industry as bold, innovative pieces of filmmaking. It's not difficult to see why. The ads are conspicuously devoid of any of the the industry's top 1,000 visual or directorial cliches. There are no idiot dads acting like bumbling lunkheads in front of their sneering, wisecracking wives and children. There are no long slo-mos of creepy liquids pouring from one side of the screen to another. And there are no jittery pans of wind-swept groups of supermodels bursting with wacky, giggly happiness (they can't believe how wonderful it is to wear these clothes!) in the middle of deserted city landscapes.

No, the BBDO ads are expensive, complicated pieces of cinema that try to disguise thievery of a whole range of recent marketing cliches in innovative visual spectacle.

For starters, "President" marks just the latest effort in an exploding election-year advertising phenomenon – the presidential campaign leitmotif. Barely a blip on the industry screen four years ago, this Bush-Kerry election is suddenly working like Spanish Fly on ad copywriters.

Three months ago the only serious offenders in this arena were Miller and Budweiser, who blasted each in the "President of Beers" spots with underhanded public slime campaigns that cannily anticipated the future course of the actual Bush-Kerry race.

But lately a whole slew of companies has followed suit. By my unofficial count, that group includes alcohol giant Brown-Forman, as well as Nextel, NetZero, Mattel, Maker's Mark, and Captain Morgan. Taglines for president-themed ad campaigns include B-F's "I'm Jack Daniel and I approved this message," and "Think Pink in 2004," the campaign slogan for Mattel's Barbie, who is running for president as the nominee of the "Party of Girls." The really sad thing about the latter campaign is that Barbie's "Pink" slogan˜ which stands for Peace, Inspiration, Nature, and Knowledge – sounds suspiciously like something stolen from the "out" bin at the Dennis Kucinich campaign headquarters. In other words, the legendary consumerist sex object Barbie is now too progressive for even the Democratic party. The "Pink" campaign has been kind of a dud, incidentally.